I was really looking forward to trying the Cellar No. 8 Zinfandel because of the fact that the Cellar No. 8 Cabernet Sauvignon was my top pick in my series on Cabs. I was hoping to find another great value wine here, but unfortunately this tasting leaves me searching.
At first, the nose didn’t strike me as distinctly zinfandel. It was was mostly smoky and subtle. Given a chance to open up the zin characteristics started to come through — raspberry, blackberry, cedar and pepper. The palate also didn’t strike me as a typical California Zinfandel. This is much more earthy and subtle than I expected. It is still quite fruity, but not quite what you would expect from a zin. The tonality of the flavors is what I would characterize as lower mid-range. Read the section in this post on the musicality of wine to understand what I mean by lower mid-range. There is not a lot of complexity but some blackberry, raspberry and a good bit of chocolate on the palate. There’s not much spice. The mouth feel is awesome, very silky.
I gave this wine a score of 82. While there are some enjoyable aspects to this wine but the numbers just didn’t add up to a great score. It lost some points on varietal character, lack of intensity and lack of complexity.
Wine: Cellar No. 8
Varietal: Zinfandel
Vintage: 2005
Alcohol: 14.6%
Rating: 82
Price Paid: $9.99