Zinfandel 'Dry Creek Reserve'

Since 1996, Dashe Cellars has been making Zinfandel from the Dry Creek Valley. To celebrate our 20 years of making wine from the region, we have selected some of the best vineyards—and the best barrels from lots within the vineyards—to create a special Dry Creek Reserve. We wanted to show off the best characteristics of the Dry Creek Valley with an intensity, a complex spectrum of flavors, and a balance of pure fruit flavors and bright acidity which are typical for that area. This Reserve wine is a particularly complex, lovely, and fruit-forward wine—a classic, balanced Dry Creek Zinfandel.

The wine was fermented using only the natural yeast population on the grapes—our tradition at Dashe Cellars—and the resulting wine shows off the terroir of the vineyards beautifully. The wine was aged for 13 months in 20% new French oak barrels, and the remainder in older French oak barrels to gain the softness of oak aging without adding excessive oak flavors. Before the final blend, we tasted all our barrels to select out only the best Zinfandel lots for this reserve wine. Finally, in our blending trials, we added about 8% of Petite Sirah, for structure and long aging potential.

Resources

Press & Reviews