Zinfandel - Made in America? Nope!

• Posted on 12 September 2024
• Posted in California, coratia, Italy, zinfandel
• 0

Zinfandel … There is lots more to the origin’s story but here are some of the highlights: An amateur botanist—Francesco Filippo Indellicati (1767-1831) from Gioia dle Colle, in the Puglia region—was the first to mention Zinfandel in his 1799 writings. There was a rare vine in his vineyard that ripens early—early for Puglia is in August. He called it “Primativo,” from the Latin “primativus” for “first ripening end.” Indellicati planted the vine close to his native village, and from there, it spread to other Apulian areas.

Indellicati’s rare vine had a different local name of “Zagarese,” after the Croatian city of Zagreb. But by 1860, Primitivo was the name that stuck. Seemingly, separately, by the mid-19th century, Zinfandel had been well established as a California varietal. Had it always been there? Zinfandel thrived in the warm dry climate of most of California. So much so, it was seen as the common man’s wine and not really revered. When Prohibition came, most growers pulled up vines in favor of another crop. Those that did not, like Inglenook Winery, in Rutherford, California, maintained growing wine grapes to sell to home markets, and to neighboring Beaulieu Vineyards, to make sacramental wine for the Catholic church. 

Another proud producer that maintained through Prohibition was a vineyard in an old mining country of the Sierras east of Central Valley, where an extraordinary port-like wine was made from some of the oldest vines in the state. The vineyard was left virtually unattended during Prohibition. The wine produced was regarded as a freak in the 1970s, because the natural alcohol level was in excess of 15 percent. (Fun fact: Zinfandel was first made into a rosé, or blush wine, in 1869 by El Pinal Winery in Lodi. The resulting product was pretty well-regarded; so much so that the California vinicultural commissioner of the day advocated the use of Zinfandel as a white wine grape as well as a red.) It took until the 1970s before the wine industry even had hopes of returning to its pre-Prohibition glory. 

Sutter Home Winery, in St. Helena, was producing “premium” Napa Valley Zinfandel red wines. Young winemaker Bob Trinchero convinced his dad, Mario, owner of Sutter Home Winery, not only to produce more Zinfandel but also to produce a rosé. The grape had fallen out of favor, so Mario was skeptical. Begrudgingly, Mario conceded to allow his son to proceed. Red wine is red because of skin contact with the juice. If you increase the percentage of skins and decrease the percentage of juice, the result is a more concentrated red wine with more color, tannins, body, and flavor. The French call this process “saignée.” The winemaker essentially ends up with two wines. The part that is bled off was fully fermented, making a dry style rosé. 

By 1972, the red Zinfandel wine was received with success. The dry rosé was only a mild success in the Sutter Home tasting room along Highway 29 in St Helena. Then it happened, in 1975, the pulled-off saignée juice got “stuck” in fermentation. Typically, the yeast eats the sugar and turns it into heat, carbon dioxide, and alcohol. But this time, the yeast did not completely eat all the sugar leaving about two percent left in the wine. Nothing that Bob did was going to get that fermentation to complete. What do you do? Somehow try to figure out how to make lemonade. Bob bottled up the “oops” wine and took it to events. He had little success in showing the wine to restaurants and retail shops. Before giving up completely, a hot day put an idea in Bob’s mind to chill the wine a bit. The slightly pink chilled wine became a hit. Consumers who rarely, or did not, drink wine soon regularly bought this new white Zinfandel. 

By 1980, Sutter Home was exploding with success. Other wineries who also got on the white Zinfandel bandwagon to make their fortunes include E.& J. Gallo, Beringer, and Robert Mondavi. Sidetrack … Where were we? Fermenting in the background of California’s wine industry revitalization was this growing interest in the origin of things, wine grapes included. During a trip to Puglia in 1967 the US plant pathologist Austin Goheen noticed the similarity of Primitivo wine to Zinfandel wine. He took Primitivo vines to the USA for comparison purposes. On the basis of his investigations, which was based purely on external criteria, he suspected that Primitivo could be identical to the varietal Zinfandel. He sent the vines to the University of California at Davis for further analysis, where they were planted. In 1975, Wade Wolf, a student at the University of California in Davis, found that isozyme analyses revealed very similar patterns (DNA analyses were not available at that time). This was perceived by the public as a match and led to the beginning of the “battle over Zinfandel.” 

In the US, people did not want to accept that Zinfandel was anything but an American varietal. Since science had not yet advanced to the age of DNA testing, it was left to the historians to re-trace the path of Zinfandel to California. Enter Charles Sullivan who pored through documents. The following are some of the findings from Sullivan’s research on events in the US. Horticulture became a pretty big focus for US residents in the northeastern part of the country in the 1800s. Mr. Fiske Allen became the leading expert on forcing hot air into greenhouses to enhance the size and flavor of grapes. This meant that plants could be grown and reproduced in and out of season, which results in more clippings becoming sellable plants. 

In the 1820s, good friends George Gibbs of Long Island, and William Prince of Boston, imported vines from all over Europe and the Austrian Empire. In 1829 Gibbs received a shipment from the Imperial Botanic Collection at the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. According to Janice Robinson, wine critic and book author, the naming of Zinfandel was somehow the result of a mix-up of several varieties being shipped at the same time. Gibbs was so excited about this; he sent a note to Prince saying the clippings were genuine, in response to which, Prince began listing Zinfandel in his catalog as the “Black Zinfardel of Hungary,” with it being “parsley leaved.”

In 1830, Gibbs went to Boston to attend the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Horticulture Society (MHS) where he displayed his European vinifera vines. Mr. Samuel Perkins, who owned a greenhouse in Boston, acquired a few and began advertising clippings of “Black Zinfardel of Hungary” for sale. Another Boston nursery owner. Charles Hovey, in 1835, praised the flavors of “Zinfindal” recommending it as a table wine. The spelling became standardized at “Zinfandal” on the East Coast. New York’s Long Island is the first recorded planting of Zinfandal in the US, and it was only marginally successful. 

In 1849 California received hundreds of gold prospectors. It was a new birthing of a society that then needed the ancillary pieces like grocery stores, lighted sidewalks, elegant restaurants, dry cleaners. OK, maybe just liveable things like housing, farming, a social gathering saloon. Oh, but absolutely they took their vines! Charles Sullivan found records of many nursey-grown clippings from Boston being sold to vineyards in California. Some of the oldest vines are in Lodi, which is sandwiched between the lower foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east, and the lower elevation wetland of the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta to the west. From there, Zinfandel spread up and down California. The vine is such a prolific plant in California, people just got used to it being there, especially through the Prohibition period, being essentially the only grown grapes for sacramental purposes. 

Did people forget how many other varietals were grown in the early years? And apparently also lost from knowledge was the origins of Zinfandel. What US plant pathologist Austin Goheen had suspected in 1967, that Primitivo was a match to California Zinfandel, had to wait until 1994 for a clear answer. Carole Meredith, from UC Davis, led a group of DNA researchers to prove the connection between Primitivo and Zinfandel with the new DNA technology. Going one step further, looking at what the local Puglian had called Primitivo before it was ironically renamed “Zagarese,” after the Croatian city of Zagreb. It is reasonable to conclude at least there might be a small connection between Primitivo and Croatia. The 18th Century Italians suspected it. In the mid-1970s Professor Franco Lamberti at the University of Zagreb found great similarities between Croatian varieties called “Plavac Maili” and Primitivo, and concluded some genetic relationship. 

Further studies proved, in 2000, the DNA relationship between Plavac Mali as a daughter varietal of Zinfandel with the help of two Croatian researchers at the University of Zagreb—Dr. Iva, Pejic and Dr. Edi Maletic. This was a leap! Zinfandel was established as a varietal in Croatia. But could they find tangible proof? Was there a plant that still existed in Croatia that matched Primitivo and Zinfandel? Plavac Mali grew everywhere in Croatia. It naturally is more resistant to molds and disease than other varietals and is a variation, wildly fast-growing vine, taking up many vineyards, and it can produce a pretty sophisticated elegant wine. 

There were teams of researchers taking clippings of plants and sending them to Meredith’s lab at UC Davis for study. Finally, in December 2001 an unknown vine was found in an old vineyard of the winegrower Ivica Radunić in Kastel Novi, near Split. It was named Crljenak Kaštelanski (Red of Kaštela à, pronounced Tserl-yee-ehnak Kashh-tell-ann-skee), after the place where it was found. The DNA profile was identical with Primitivo/Zinfandel. Later another nine vines were found. The vines here were known as “Pribidrag.” Another discovery of Zinfandel was in a town called Omiš. These discoveries marked the end of a four-year study on Zinfandel’s origins, an undertaking that was nicknamed “The Zinquest.” Of all the names—Zinfandel, Crljenak Kaštelanski, Pribidrag Primitivo, and Kratošija in Montenegro and Macedonia—Meridith determined that Tribidrag is the oldest. What a mouthful!