Wine for Normal People

After 14 years, I felt like it was probably time to do another show on Zinfandel! Known as America's heritage grape, the story of the quest for its European origins is like a mystery novel with an interesting end. It is a great grape and so historic!    Photo: Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons   In this show I cover the massive history of the grape and the unbelievable decades-long search for its origins, which were finally discovered after a dogged group of researchers did a painstaking investigation.    I move on to discuss the vineyard and winemaking. Much of the information I got was from one of the kings of Zinfandel in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma, Fred Peterson of Peterson Winery. Fred started his career in wine working under the very famed Paul Draper at Ridge, before starting his own winery. Fred has been making Zinfandel for more than 50 years. His estate vineyard is outside his front door and has Zin in it. He sources from other vineyards, and makes low intervention, excelle