The Zombie Zin is a non-vintage wine that is 95% Zinfandel and 5% Syrah sourced from vineyards in several locations in California. Zombie is a brand from Chateau Diana a family-owned and operated winery started in 1981 and is located in Sonoma. Zombie Zin may be a brand that was produced to take advantage of…
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The Sobon Estates Old Vine Amador County Zinfandel 2019 is sourced from estate vineyards in the Amador County AVA, east of Napa, north, and east of Lodi, and east of Sacramento, California. Amador County is one of the oldest wine regions in California. The Sobon family started Shenandoah Vineyards in 1977 and 1989 purchased the…
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The Seghesio Sonoma County Zinfandel 2019 is a blend of 55% estate fruit, from Sonoma Valley, the Russian River Valley, Alexander Valley, and Dry Creek, along with 45% grapes from long term contracted vineyards. This is Seghesio’s “entry-level” Zinfandel bottling, though it is hard to call any wine that has received 90 points plus eleven…
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The Trader Joe’s Reserve Dry Creek Zinfandel 2020 is a $9.99 Trader Joe’s exclusive. TJ’s sells many versions of these Reserve wines every year. They are wines sourced from vineyards in high-end AVAs that sell at a bargain price. You never get much information on the wine, so just how exclusive these vineyards are never…
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The Boneshaker Old Vine Zinfandel 2019 is sourced from two vineyards in the Mokelumne River AVA inside the Lodi AVA in the Central Valley of California. Boneshaker is one of the Hahn Family Vineyards wine brands. They purchased the Smith and Hook vineyard in 1979 and soon had a winery located in the Santa Lucia…
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The 19 Crimes Snoop Cali Rosé 2020 is a brand from Treasury Wine Estates, a mainly Australian company with wines from all over the world, including American wines like Beringer and Stags’ Leap. The 19 Crimes brand lineup features Australian wines, but the Snoop Dogg wines are sourced from California vineyards. The 19 Crimes wines…
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The Trader Joe’s Reserve Oak Knoll Zinfandel 2019 is a $9.99 Trader Joe’s exclusive sourced from grapes farmed in the Oak Knoll AVA inside Napa Valley. This is a one-off wine; when it sells out, it is gone for good, so if you like it, buy all you need. Oak Knoll is located in the…
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The Peachy Canyon Lodi Zinfandel 2017 can be found at Trader Joe’s for $7.99. This is a mystery wine since it does not show up on Peachy Canyon’s website or have much of a web presence. Peachy Canyon Winery, founded in 1988, is located in the Paso Robles AVA inside California’s Central Coast AVA. It…
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The Dueling Pistols Dry Creek Red 2016 is not your usual CheapWineFinder wine. It is not cheap, this is a splurge, special occasion wine for most folks who follow CWF. It is a Red Blend, 50% Zinfandel, and 50% Syrah and the list price is $49.99. A quick check of the web showed online prices…
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The Lange Twins Old Vine Zinfandel 2017 is an Estate grown Zinfandel sourced from vineyards in the Lodi AVA of California’s Central Valley. The Lange Twins are identical twins Brad and Randall Lange, their family have farmed in Lodi since the 1870s and first purchased vineyards in 1916. They are the 4th generation farming grapes…
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The Story The Fallen Bridge Lodi Zinfandel 2017 is a $6.99 Trader Joe’s exclusive. That is about all the information available for this Zin. The company that made the wine, Sonoma Bespoke, is a custom private-label winery. They make wines for stores and restaurants across the country. If you are in a 7/11 and see…
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The Story The Bogle Phantom Red Blend 2016 is a blend of 51.5% Petit Sirah and 48.5% Zinfandel sourced from vineyards in several California vineyard regions. Bogle Vineyards was named 2019 Winery of the Year by Wine Enthusiast magazine. Bogle is located in the Clarksburg AVA which is south and a little east of Napa…
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The Story PPE, six-foot social distancing, lockdown, masks, wash your hands every time you touch something, cross the street when you see someone walking towards you, so much for your favorite pub or restaurant, and stand in line to enter the grocery store, the so-called new reality. Well, we have our XLR microphones and our…
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The Story The Parasphere Sonoma Zinfandel 2014 is a $7.99 Trader Joe’s mystery wine. There are several things here that do not add up to an aged Sonoma County Zinfandel for under eight bucks. The first point is obvious, Sonoma Zinfandel at 6 years of age selling for $7.99 does not exist in the wild….
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The Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfandel 2018 is sourced from vineyards in the Lodi AVA of Northern California. Gnarly Head is one of Delicato Family Vineyard’s portfolio of wines. Click on the link above to see their family of wine. Delicato has been around since 1924, they are the sixth-largest winery in the United State….
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The Story The Federalist Lodi Zinfandel 2016 is 100% Zinfandel sourced from three different sub-AVAs of the Lodi AVA which is inside the Central Valley AVA. Most of the California wine you drink comes from the Central Coast AVA (Paso Robles, Santa Barbara, and others) and the North Coast AVA (Sonoma, Napa, etc..) and they are…
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The Story The Ravenswood Vintners Blend Zinfandel 2017 is 76% Zinfandel, 21% Petite Sirah, and 3% Mixed Blacks (mixed blacks is the old school way of saying various Red wine grapes) sourced from more than one California grape growing AVA. That actually is the tech notes for the 2016 vintage, about a year ago the brand…
Read MoreThe Story The Federalist Honest Red Blend 2016 is 46.4% Merlot, 24% Zinfandel, 22% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 7.6% Malbec from grapes sourced in 76% Mendocino, 16.4% Napa, and 7.6% Sonoma. If my math is correct, the Malbec came from Sonoma, and part of the Merlot came from Napa and the rest came from Mendocino. A…
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The Story The Klinker Brick Old Vine Zinfandel 2016 is sourced from 16 “old vine” vineyards in the Mokelumne delta region of Lodi, California. Klinker Brick is family-owned and they are 5th generation fruit growers and have produced Klinker Brick wines since 2000. You hear about old vines when talking about Zinfandel on a regular basis,…
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The Story The Pure Bred Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel 2017 is a $6.99 Trader Joe’s (maybe exclusive). The reason I say maybe is this wine seems to be a close-out wine of some sort. The listed winery on the back of the label, West Coast Wine Group, Lodi, California, no longer has a website. Their URL,…
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The Story The Federalist Dry Creek Zinfandel 2016 is 98% Zinfandel and 2% Carignane primarily sourced from Orsi vineyards in the southern end of Dry Creek Valley about a mile from the Russian River. The Zinfandel grapes came from 6 separate blocks of the vineyard and were fermented separately. The 6 lots were then blended and…
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The Story The Trader Joe’s Reserve Amador County Zinfandel Lot 185 2016 is a $9.99 Trader Joe’s exclusive. Amador County is 100 miles east of San Francisco, as far north as Napa County, but on the other side of Sacramento in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is the California Gold Rush country….
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The Podcast This is a Quake And Dave Podcast about the Federalist Honest Red Blend 2016 a wine that they first got to sample while at a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. The game didn’t work as a welcoming place to do wine reviews, so we retreated to the rooftop Cheapwinefinder Podcast Studios high above…
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The Story The Nick Goldschmidt Fidelity Alexander Valley Railroad Estate Zinfandel 2017 is 88% Zinfandel and 12% Petite Sirah sourced from the Railroad Estate vineyard in Alexander Valley, Sonoma, California. Nick Goldschmidt is the head of a vineyard and winemaking family, everyone get involved, including the children. They have vineyards and wineries in New Zealand,…
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The Dark Horse Double Down Red is a non-vintage limited edition Red blend using Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Tannat (a blending grape originally from France, used to add dark fruit and structure to the blend) and Teroldego (a grape originally from Italy, it has characteristics similar to Zinfandel and Syrah) all sourced from vineyards in California. Dark…
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