Zinfandel Wine in Australia

These are some of the adjectives used for this variety on De Long's Wine Grape Varietal Table

Zinfandel

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Debate and discussion about its origin has raged over the past few years, but it is now established that the Californian Zinfandel is genetically identical to the Italian variety Primitivo and the obscure Croatian variety Crljenak Kastelanski. The last named has the oldest provenance so in some ways can be regarded as the correct name. How Zin and Primitivo got to their current homes is still an open topic.

Zinfandel has a reputation for being difficult to manage in the vineyard, and it is not user friendly in the winery either, so it seems that wine producers either love it or hate it.

It is prone to uneven ripening even within individual bunches, see the image at right, which presents dilemmas at vintage time. Some winemakers, such as Rick Glastonbury at Kabminye in the Barossa Valley see this as an advantage, allowing wine to be made with complex palate showing a range of ripe and ripening fruit flavours.

This variety is popular in California where it makes all manner of wines, perhaps the best is the rugged dry reds where finesse is not an issue. Most popular is 'white Zin' which is a sweetish pink style that gets short shrift from most serious wine critics.

Some enthusiastic Californian winemakers give it careful treatment including several picking passes and attentive work in the winery followed by oak aging to produce wines of some distinction.

In Australia, Cape Mentelle at Margaret River and Nepenthe in the Adelaide Hills were the first to establish a reputation for producing good Zinfandel wines, but they now have plenty of competitors. It is fair to say that wines from this variety in Australia are a work in progress, but most producers seem to be aiming at a robust red style rather than the sometimes insipid "White Zin" beverage.

Some Australian Wineries using Zin/Primitivo are