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