Tasting - Tortoise Creek Zinfandel

 

Name: Tortoise Creek Zinfandel

Variety: 85% Zinfandel, 3% Barbera, 3% Teroldego, 2% Aglianico,

2% Petite Sirah and 5% other reds

Region: Lodi, California

Country: USA

Year: 2019

Price: $12

Winery Review: Our Zinfandel has a deep color and rich, spicy aromas of wild dark berries

and plums, It is round, rich, and bursting with flavor. The other red varietals add

a delightful complexity to the final blend.

Wine Folly: Zinfandel in general/Lodi, CA (191) - I could definitely pick up on the dark fruit mentioned like blackberry bramble, as well as the strong presence of spices like pepper. I don't think I picked up on any peach like they mentioned.

My Review: The dark berries are what hit my nose first, then soon after I was hit with a strong tingle on the top of my nose from the peppery spices. I paired this zinfandel with different meals on two consecutive nights. The first night, I enjoyed it with sausage, chicken, and black olive pizza. The second night, I paired it with a ribeye steak and eggs. While drinking it with both meals, I noticed that the food masked the hit of the spices to my nose and made the dark berry taste a bit sweeter and last longer. Overall, I really enjoyed the wine and think that Zinfandels will often be my wine of choice with red meats and foods with Italian seasoning.

My Personal Experience With Wine Thus Far In My Life

    Hello Everyone! My name is Chase Ackerman and I'm currently in my final semester at Virginia Tech studying computational modeling and data analytics with minors in math and statistics. After hearing that mouthful, you may be wondering how in the world I ended up in a class about wine. Although a lot of what I do in my classes involves crunching numbers and typing thousands of lines of code, I have a ton of interests completely separate from that classwork.

    I grew up in a household where my parents would indulge in the occasional glass of wine during dinner and they always served bottles of wine whenever we had guests over. When I was younger, I never paid much attention to anything pertaining to wine and kept a mindset that it was just something that all adults drank mostly at dinner parties. My parents weren't overly strict about letting me try a taste of their glasses of wine whenever I wanted, but the taste definitely didn't appeal to my undeveloped senses. That changed slightly in recent years, and now I'm able to appreciate about any glass of wine with a meal at a restaurant.

    Going into this class, I really knew nothing about the variety of wine produced, the way you're supposed to drink it, or even the proper way to open or store a bottle. I had zero preference of which wine to order, and I would almost always order whatever my girlfriend was getting. I decided to take this class to fulfill my final free elective credit requirements, as well as to set myself up for my adult life whenever I need to talk the talk at work or family events. The same way people emphasize that most business is done on the golf course, I feel like there's a ton to say about business done over a meal and a glass of wine. Just in the first two weeks of the course, I feel like I've learned a ton of things that I'll carry with me for life! If I leave this class learning anything, I hope to at least find out my favorite variety of wine.