Producer >
Alex Krause and John Locke founded Birichino in Santa Cruz in 2008. Drawing on a combined four decades making wine in California, France, Italy, and beyond, they are focused on attaining the perfect balance of perfume, poise, and puckishness. Sourcing from a number of carefully farmed, family-owned, own-rooted 19th and early 20th century vineyards (and a few from the late disco era) planted by and large in more moderate, marine-influenced climates, their preoccupation is to safeguard the quality and vibrance of their raw materials. Their preference is for minimal intervention, most often favouring native fermentations, employing stainless or neutral barrels, minimal racking and fining, and avoiding filtration altogether when possible. But most critically, their aim is to make delicious wines that give pleasure, revitalize, and revive.
Viticulture >
The St Georges Zinfandel was first planted on gravelly loam soils by an Italian bootlegger in 1922 in the lee of the Santa Cruz Mountains, on the wrong side of the law and the road, and 50’ too low to qualify for what became the Santa Cruz Mountains appellation in 1981. Yet the mountain and marine influence of Monterey Bay 12 miles west is undeniable- the acidity is mouthwatering, enhanced by a stone fruit spectrum of flavors and alpine herbs overlaid on the brambly sapidity of zinfandel.
Winemaking >
Among the great challenges of winemaking, alongside frequently wet feet, perpetually dirty hands, and resisting the urge to get high on your own supply, is maintaining discipline to follow the path the grapes have in mind when it conflicts with the path you’d plotted for them. We prefer to bring these grapes into the winery at 13.0%-13.5% potential alcohol, and suprisingly, in 2021 the vines cooperated and ripened at a very gentle pace, allowing us to harvest them on the 20th of October- later than we've ever picked this site, but still at modest degree of ripeness, clocking in at 13.5%. Farmed continuously from father to son by the Besson family for the past 96 years. Native ferment, elevage in neutral barriques and demi-muid. Unfiltered.
Zinfandel
White
14.5
USA
California
12
Cork
Birichino
75cl
Vegan
Vegetarian 
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