Costco Zinzanie Review

After a few nice bottles I decided to go back to Costco. Zinzanie is the bottle’s name, another one from Julia Wine. I was hoping to get a nice, well priced Zinfandel (which I like). Not so lucky – what I got was a bottle full of yuk.

From the get go the color seemed a little too translucent for the rich, woody wine I was hoping for. Then the nose. About the only thing I got from that was that, yes, this is alcohol. The nose should be the beginning of a little journey. Perhaps a walk through a forest with hints of wood, flowers and maybe some wild berries. The journey should follow a few bends in the road with each smell adding a new turn in the path. This journey was more akin to the back alley beside the old Peel Pub here in Montreal.

Here’s a quick note from Ancient Oak Cellars describing Zinfandel from the Sierra Foothills:

Wines are deeply colored, with bright forward fruit, jammy, ripe black raspberry flavors, and a strong black cherry, verging on cola, character.  Aromas are often described as cocoa, briary spice, licorice, mint, chocolate, cedar and tobacco.

Maybe the taste will make up for the bad intro. Nope. Very disappointing. A typical box store rip off. Below average bulk wine hiding in a snazzy looking bottle.

Let’s see if I can find any other comments to back me up on this.
About the only comment I found was on cellartracker where 1 commentor, itpuzzles, gave it a 91 – what?! That seemed odd. I’m not saying that I have any evidence of this but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Puzzles punched his time card at the Julia Wine factory. This is not a 90+ point wine. If it is – I’ll have to close this joint up.

My recommendation on this is to keep walking, pick up some peanut butter and a canoe but skip the spiffy zinnie.

A decent Zinfandel that I had recently (but unfortunately didn’t have my notepad) was Easton Wines.