Zinfandel & Sonoma & Stuff

The press release went out last week announcing the big Wine Blogger Blind Tasting Challenge at the 2008 Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa in October. The taste-off line up will consist exclusively of Sonoma County AVAs and I'm thinking I should probably get some practice if I want to be a contenda. To that end, I put a couple of Sonoma wines in my basket in a recent online wine purchase. Well, one was a Chardonnay that I just bought for when my relatives visit. The other was a Zin but it turned out to be out of stock so I took the bottle of comparable CA Zin that was offered as a substitute. It was a 2006 Ridge Paso Robles Zinfandel. I'm not going to expend the effort to go into great detail about this wine since we weren't overly impressed. Its a decent Zin but it's also around $28. It's got the requisite über ripe fruit going on and everything and is no doubt drinkable but, I found it to be a little on the flabby side and generally lacking in backbone so I think for the money, you'd do better to spend another six or seven bucks for one of these superior Sonoma selections.

Since we're already knee deep in the Sonoma Zinfandel plugging, I may as well mention a totally relevant event that the guys over at Wine Biz Radio tipped listeners off to in their most recent show/podcast. That's right, the 5th Annual Spotlight on Zinfandel is being held this weekend, September 13th and 14th at participating wineries in beautiful Sonoma. Of course, I know from our visitor map here at Smells Like Grape, that most of you are nowhere near Sonoma, and so probably can't make it but, it's still good to know what's going on...Maybe next year.