Zinfandel is California's inheritance from the Gold Rush: planted by the thousands of acres in the 1850s–80s to slake the mining boom, often as head-trained bushes that needed no wire. Some of those gnarled vines still bear, and old-vine zinfandel from century-old blocks is the state's most tangible link to its first wine era.
The grape's strangest turn came in 1975, when a stuck fermentation at Sutter Home left residual sugar in a pale rosé: White Zinfandel was born, and its enormous sweet success ironically paid to keep the old red-wine vines in the ground. The real thing is dark and generous — bramble, black raspberry, pepper — with alcohol as open-handed as the sunshine.