Discover a Budget-Friendly Zinfandel from the Beckett Family

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Speaker 1:
0:21

Paso Robles Zinfandel 2023. $10 Zinfandel from a sub-ABA in Paso Robles. That's kind of strange. Another thing that's kind of strange is that the back label told you who made it. You know, typically speaking, trader Joe's especially the reserve wines don't want you to know who made it. They have shell companies after shell companies. It says bottled and cellared by. That means basically nothing, that just means the bottling line bottled it. But here this is the Beckett family from Paso Robles made the wine.

Speaker 1:
0:57

The Beckett family is the people behind Peachy Canyon, which was founded in 1988. It's one of the pioneers of zinfandel and paso robles. Uh, the sons broke off and did chronic sellers and they did great. Now they're back at um peachy canyon and um they're. They make really nice zinfandel wines. I I mean their Zinfandels are $40, $50, $60, $70 Zinfandels.

Speaker 1:
1:28

There was a time when Peachy Canyon was you could find a value price one, but I haven't seen one in a while. And Chronic Cellars wasn't very super expensive. They weren't that cheap either. Super expensive, but they weren't that cheap either. And the how do you? That's the first time I ever saw the name of it before Adelaide District, which is in the northwest corner of Paso Robles. It's a little bit different. It's rocky soil and it gets like 10 times the rainfall of anything else in Paso Robles. So it's little bit different up there and it's a great place for Zinfandel. They most of Paso Robles is a desert, but not up there. I'm gonna take a sip. It's good.

Speaker 1:
2:23

Now I'm going to talk about something that probably isn't related to this wine, but maybe it is. 2024 was a bad year for beer, spirits, wine. It was off eight, nine, ten percent. A lot of um. A lot of people who are making wine canceled contracts with the growers. I mean there's a lot of the estate.

Speaker 1:
2:48

Wine is kind of like it's in the upper end but in the value price there's people growing the grapes and yet they're purchased grapes. There aren't a lot of new labels coming out. Everything is kind of like, uh, of like, uh, what's going on? They're even talking about some people uh pulling up the grapes and planting something else. If they can't, you know if it's going to be going downhill. They want to know what's going on with, uh, people's drinking habits and that type of thing. So there is wines left over.

Speaker 1:
3:19

So now is this a leftover wine? I don't know it kind of like you know it has some like why is it from a sub ABA, from Paso Robles, from one of the best producers of Zinfandel and Paso Robles? I mean I have no idea why. I mean I'm not telling you this is actually a $70 wine for $10, anything like that. I don't know where the grapes come from. Have enough contacts and possible rubles. If this isn't an estate wine, uh, they could have purchased some grapes from leftovers from their friends and put together a wine for trader joe's, which is still pretty good because it's it's a high-end for zippendale growing region. I mean, this is the wines here are expensive not 9.99, so there's bargains out there. And I mean I'm starting to see weird things happening, like costco always usually has the the winemaker's name on it, sometimes the, uh, the winery's name on it. Now trader joe's is starting to do that. And then I had a aldi's wine that kind of had. That too, it's like, was from a, from a major producer and it's like and they're not hiding it as well, and like what's going on out there.

Speaker 1:
4:27

Well, let's talk about the Trader Joe's Reserve, adelaide District, paso Robles 2023. It's smooth and really tasty. It's long. It's got really good flavors to it. There's blackberry, there's maybe some molasses, some french vanilla, some cranberry, tart cranberry and then some smooth plum, some sweet spice. It's just got long, smooth flavors. It's not a spicy Zinfandel, but it does. You know cuz you can get that it can be spicy. This is wrong. Smooth nectar sweet. We're not talking about sugary sweet, we're talking about roundness to the flavors or the fruit flavors really good fruit flavors. That molasses kind of gives it a little kick. Maybe there's some mocha in there, some little bit of coffee going on and smooth on the palate and it's kind of long. The flavors kind of stay with you too. The acidity is like seamless, it's like well integrated in the body of the wine. The tannins are sweet.

Speaker 1:
5:44

This is a really nice effort, especially for ten bucks. You know it's been a while. I used to love Zinfandel. It used to be my favorite red and you know, the last few years it's kind of fallen off where I like it. But it's not really knocking my socks off and I'm not even wearing socks. So this one is really good tasting wine for $10. I mean, you can spend more, but I don't know if you're going to be getting that much. I mean, there's a reason why there's $40, $50, $60 wines from different regions. They have different flavors and different characteristics and you can really fall in love with those characteristics, but this is from the same small region and it tastes great. So that's it for me.

Speaker 1:
6:31

Domain dave cheapwinefightercom. This is the 999 trader, joe's reserve at aladia district, paso robles. Uh, zinfandel 2023. It's from a big name winery in top winery, from a top AVA, and it's good. So, like us, where you got your podcast, I got a couple more wines coming, a couple more interesting things. 2025 was way better than I thought it would be. So, adios, keep it cheap, stay warm and I'll be talking to you. Bye, bye.