2000 Rancho Zabaco Dancing Bull Zin

[mrdutton]

Ooooopppppsssss!!! Well I had a bottle of the RZ 2000 Dancing Bull this evening. It was consumed with a salad of tomatoes and cucumbers (with a dash of olive oil and balsmico), fresh broccoli cooked in chicken broth and spaghetti and meatballs with tomato sauce. The salad and the pasta were treated with a bit of freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Well yes, the wine was not very complex - it is not very old either. But the fruit was tremendous.

This is a very fruit forward wine. It almost seems as if there is some residual sugar left over there is so much fruit on my palate. There were plenty of black cherries and raspberries - two of my favorites.

There was acid present, enough in my humble opinion to handle the fresh tomatoes in the salad and the cooked tomatoes in the sauce. I mean if there were black cherries and raspberries there just has to be acid - you can't get one without the other.

The wine had a peppery, spicy dry finish to it that handled my tastes. (Might have something to do with the fact that fresh ground pepper and I are old and true friends. I like to have a bit of salad with me pepper.)

And to top it all off it was not super-sized BIG, as it came in around 13% alcohol (unlike the Tobin James Zin I had a couple of weeks ago that was almost 16%.)

For a blend of grapes from Lodi, Sonoma, Central Coast, North Coast and California Valley this juice just was not that bad for the less than $10.00 a bottle cost.

So I guess I don't completely agree with Newbie's assessment of this wine. I'd buy this Zin again and use it out on the deck in the back yard as a summer drinker with the BBQ'd stuff that comes off the grill. Or I'd just use it to swill a few glasses in the evening to "calm down" after a hard day a work.