Nice medium-dark ruby with wide garnet edges.  Slightly staining.  Big, opulent peppery nose inundates you with ripe fruit, some oak, not much AL to speak of and a tiny nuance of cellar.  Shockingly spicy and earth-ridden, but far more of a sharp fresh crushed rock than peaty loam.  A tiny bit of fat zinfandel oxidation lurking.  This is a really nice zinfandel.  I don’t mean to sound so surprised… but there’s a couple factors at work here.  First of all, it has been a REALLY LONG TIME since I have smiled at a Zinfandel.  I was California’s biggest zin-wonk in the 80’s and 90’s and drank and owned FAR too much of it and then… it just kinda… started going… well, you know.  It got fat.  It got Barbie-fruited.  It got tourist-extracted.  It got 18% AL.  It got KILLED in other words.  There is not a single bottle of zinfandel in my cellar–and that is down from probably almost 50% in the mid-90’s.  Not a single bottle today.  But this style I can get behind.  Reminds me of Burgess and Mazzacco and Joseph Swan and Cline and the Three R’s: RIDGE, Ravenswood & Rosenblum, back in the day.  Appropriately obscure on entry, with a nice showing of acid accompanying, almost immediately the mouth is overwhelmed with ALL of the things the nose promised.  Lovely fruit and spice.  Extracted, yes.  Quite ripe?  Yes.  But killing it with the Jim Jones Grape which nauseates and obscures everything?  No.  Appropriately Primitivo and appropriately California.  Nice cassis and licorice over the middle and runs off down the dusty road hand-in-hand with nice, controllable tannin–always holding a little bit back.  Like a great red wine should.  I have heard of this winery maybe once before and am not really even sure where it is.  San Jose or something.  I ran into several cases considerably discounted from the original 20$ the other day and couldn’t say no.  If you are local and curious, shoot me an email ZVOITURE@gmail.com if you want some.  I am going to go get some more.  And it has been well over a decade since I have said that about an Zin.  14-5   ♦♦