Birichino extolled the virtues of the relatively cool vintage 2018 for producing elegant, streamlined, highly aromatic and complex wines. Those qualities emerge more strongly in Saint Georges Zinfandel than any Birichino confrère. The advertised abv of 13.0% recalls old vine zinfandels from a bygone era. The truth always comes out when evaluating the merits of a given site over a period of vintages of varying character. 2017 and 2018 were polar opposites with regard to vintage conditions, though the vineyard, planted in 1922 up against the lee side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, produced equally compelling, if completely different wines in these vintages. Here, the acidity is mouthwatering, yet the telltale stone fruit spectrum of flavors announce that to deprive oneself of chicken tagine with apricots or couscous with nectarines and toasted almonds - as one’s dietary inclinations inform - is to ignore the furtive hope that the summer will bring with it an overflowing bowl of cherries, literally and/or figuratively. Farmed continuously from father to son by the Besson family for the past ninety-five years. From a cool spot up against the Santa Cruz Mountains. Native ferment, neutral barrel, unfiltered.
