Napa Valley

Napa Valley is celebrated the world over for Cabernet Sauvignon, but it is also an old, quiet home of Zinfandel — a grape planted here in the nineteenth century, long before Cabernet's rise, and still made from gnarled old vines on the valley's warm eastern benches and Mayacamas hillsides. Grown on well-drained volcanic and rocky soils and ripened by hot, sunny days, Napa Zinfandel is riper, denser and more structured than the valley-floor norm: concentrated, jammy blackberry and boysenberry over dark chocolate, black pepper and sweet baking spice, in a big, warm, plush frame.