I had the pleasure of tasting a bottle of 2003 Zinfandel from Barra of Mendocino the other night. Barra is a divison of Girasole Vineyards and all of Barra’s grapes are organically grown in the Redwood Valley Appelation.
This vintage was 92% Zinfandel and 8% Petite Sirah with a Harvest Brix of 25 and 14.3% alcohol content. The wine was the perfect pairing for my dinner of beef brisket, noodle kugle and peas. It had a big berry taste of black fruit and spice flavors that enveloped my palate.
Charlie Barra, whose family has a long history as growers of fine wine grapes in France and Italy, is the winemaster. In fact, the 2003 vintage was his 58th harvest.
W: www.barraofmendocino.com.
A: P.O. Box 196, 10801 East Road, Redwood Valley, CA 95470.
T: 707.485.8771.
Gil,
Thanks for the nice compliment over a year ago on the 2003 Barra of Mendocino zinfandel. It is still drinking very well with a very nice mouthfeel. We have just put it on sale for $14.00 at our tasting room, not because the wine is of any less quality, but because we think we need to move on to the 2004 vintage so that our distributors perceive us to be perfectly in balance with their “optimal life of a zinfandel”.
Also, thank you for listing all the events happening in Mendocino. It is such a wonderful, laid-back county…as I am sure you well know.
Do you have any ideas on what we could call our soon-to-be-first release of 2005 Petite Sirah port that we can’t call port any more because of the US agreement with the EU? A fellow in Healdsburg called his “Left of Starboard”, but we can’t think of anything as clever that the public might recognize.
Martha Barra