Weekend Wine Tasting Notes - Catch-up #3

So this last weekend tasting note is a bit tough for me to do, given that it's a review of a wine I made - the 2008 FetZin. It's tough because if I'm too positive about it you could obviously say I'm biased, but if I'm too negative you could say I'm being modest, so I'll just do my best to give my honest opinion. My honest opinion is I love this wine. The background is - I wanted to start testing my wine making skills so this past fall I purchased some grapes through a local fruit distributor. I bought about 70 lbs of Zinfandel and 70 lbs of Cabernet Sauvignon. Both varieties came from Lodi, CA. The Zinfandel grapes were beautiful. Dark colored, full clusters and very firm. (The Cabernet's were not so hot but we'll discuss them later). I bottled this Zin about a month ago and was pretty excited about it at the time, I believe it's only gotten better over this first month in the bottle. First thing I'll say about it is even though there is no residual sugar (it has a fairly high alcohol content of 15%) it almost tastes sweet in your mouth. The nose on the wine is vanilla, oak and cherry. When I taste it my thoughts are black cherry, chocolate, blackberry, and vanilla. One of our guests who tried it called out another flavor that I totally agreed with - fig. This is a wine that is almost perfect either by itself or with a desert. Not sure I'd recommend it with a meal, unless it was something really spicy. The flavor is "sweet" enough for someone who doesn't typically drink reds to enjoy, but it's also a "big" red wine so the red wine fans will also really like it. When my wife and I first tried it her first comment was this tastes just like the Rombauer Zinfandel we had in Napa (Rombauer was a great Zin that retails in the $30's). I'll sum it up by saying I'm very excited and pleased by my first real wine production. Unfortunately the 70 lbs of grapes only produced a little over a case of the wine. I want as many honest opinions on this wine that I can get, so if you're interested and we're getting together, let me know I would love to share the Zin with you. That's all for now, enjoy the first miracle!