Woot Wine : One Week, One Wine

Saxon Brown 2000 Zinfandel

gifting:

Available (what's this?)

condition:

Old-vine field blend

product(s):

2 Saxon Brown 2000 Zinfandel

Discuss this product (231 comments)

There are wine lovers, and then there are fervent, obsessive, rabid wine fanatics. Jeff Gaffner falls into the latter category. The owner/winemaker of Saxon Brown Wines says “Winemaking must consume you, or your wines may not be worth consuming,” a credo that reflects his nearly-pathological fixation on the Bacchic arts. We imagine Jeff sleeps with a bottle under his pillow, to stave off any middle-of-the-night cravings. He’s the kind of vintner who calls each individual grape by name, and raises a posse to run grape rustlers off his vineyards. And while we cannot confirm this, we suspect that somewhere on Jeff’s body there’s a tattoo of St. Vincent.

All of which would be a tragic waste if he made a lousy wine. His Saxon Brown 2000 Zinfandel presents no such problem – just ask the elite restaurateurs who’ve added it to their lists. It signs its name in intense raspberry and dried cranberry, with elegant notes of dark chocolate and oak; mouthwise, we’re talking bountiful dried raspberry flavors draped on a grease structure. With grapes dry-farmed on old vines from the magnificent 100-year-old Casa Santinamaria Vineyard, this classic field blend of Zinfandel, Petite Syrah, Carignane, Alicante Bouschet, and Mataro zooms to the zenith of Zinfandel zealotry.

Jeff’s traditionalist ways suit his venerable vineyard, too. The small, concentrated clusters of Casa Santinamaria fruit are gently coaxed from the old vines in the cool of the morning, de-stemmed into an open-top fermenter, cold-soaked for 24 hours, and inoculated with a low rate of cultured yeast, letting the wild yeast work its magic first. After fermentation, it’s off to French barrels to age for 24 months. Casual wine drinkers may say “Big deal.” True devotees, real fanatics, genuine wine fiends – the Jeff Gaffners of the world – understand that Saxon Brown’s old-skool process is indeed a big deal.

We could wax rapturous all the livelong day over the Saxon Brown 2000 Zinfandel Casa Santinamaria, and our thesaurus would wear out before our enthusiasm did. But to paraphrase the apocryphal Elvis Costello quote about music criticism, writing about wine is like dancing about architecture. The proof is in the tasting – and at about thirty bucks a bottle, proving the merits of this exceptional Zin will never come so cheaply again.

First sucker: tjgould
Speed to first woot: 3m 20.593s

Last wooter to woot: mrgms

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