Dry Creek Valley

Dry Creek Valley is widely regarded as the spiritual home of California Zinfandel: a warm, sun-soaked Sonoma County valley whose old, dry-farmed, head-trained bush vines yield the benchmark old-vine style — a deep, full-bodied red of jammy blackberry and raspberry lifted by a signature crack of black pepper, sweet baking spice and warm, high-alcohol generosity. Cooled each evening by air drawn up from the Russian River, it marries ripe, brambly fruit to a peppery structure that keeps the wine balanced rather than merely big.