8 new websites! Last Update 10/19/98

		Winery Web Sites Description Dover Canyon One of the cool San Luis Obispo wineries making small lots of intense wines and considering itself part of the Rhone Ranger revolution. The Zinfandel from Temple Gap recently won double GOLD at the SF Wine Competition. Only 200 cases were made. Storybook Mountain Vineyards A Zinfandel specialist with a big reputation and a nice website. Deaver Vineyards This is the vineyard that sold the grapes to Sutter Home in the late 1960's and probably made the modern reputation for Zin in Amador county. This wine is seldom seen. Paradigm Winery This is your basic "charge as much as possible" winery. They do not list Zinfandel on the home page but dig through the site and you'll find one they sell for $40. Rosenblum Cellars Famed Zinfandel specialist in Alameda, California. Another recent winner at the San Francisco Wine Competition. Alderbrook Dry creek Zin-maker. Rather nice site. Includes excellent list of local lodging.

Peachy Canyon Highly regarded Paso Robles winery. Interesting "framed" site. River Run Vineyards Kind of a "low-rent" website. This obscure winery is a Rhone ranger type operation also making a Zin. Twin Hills A Paso Robles operation making a lot of award winning wines. Well-priced and worth looking into. Fetzer, Bel Arbor An elaborate site with recipes, an on-line magazine and much more. Well done. Fetzer is well-known for making high quality wines at low prices. Clos du Bois Like Fetzer a winery devoted to high quality at reasonable prices. They specialize in barrel fermented special bottlings. The site is pretty but hard to navigate. Clos du Val Fascinating winery begun in the 1970's that never found its groove. So-so website. Charles Krug Pretty website. This winery is one of the most famous in California and considering its prime location and long history has to be considered a perennial underachiever.

Canyon Road Winery A Geyserville Winery that makes a Dry Creek Zinfandel sold only at the Winery. Worth checking out when touring the wine country. Black Sheep Winery An obscure foothills winery located in Murphys making Amador and Calaveras county Zins. Burrell School Vineyards This is digging. This Santa Cruz Mountain Winery traces its earliest grape growing to 1853. Probably a cool place to visit. The Zin comes from Paso Robles. Gundlasch-Bundschu A winery with a long history if you have a short memory. I have generally found this winery disappointing. Kokopelli Winery Arizona Zinfandel? This winery claims that this Arizona wine growing region pre-dates the first grapes in California by 100 years. The website is simply gosh-awful looking and the content is mostly about the owners and how cool they are. Very little details about the actual wines which include a Zinfandel. Kendall-Jackson Kind of the Microsoft of wineries. They buy up the competition and produce a functional product that is always a sure bet in a restaurant if nothing good is actually on the list. There is an overriding flavor in all the KJ wines which I do not like. Simi Winery One of the oldest wineries in California and one whose I've never collected. Every so often this winery attempts to become world-class and just doesn't quite get there.

Ridge Vineyards A pioneering company historically making some of the greatest Zinfandels in California History. Fallen recently into a high alcohol funk. Interesting is that the Ridge Zinfandels can age better than most California wine. The website is outstanding too. Milat Winery Yet another one of those vineyard owners who has decided they can make more money in the wine business than in the grape business. I'm unfamiliar with their wine. Plam Vineyards Classic boutique winery making killer award winning wines including a Napa Zinfandel. Ultra-small production. Creston Vineyards Game show host Alex Trebek owns this Paso Robles winery. Nice website but only contains gratuitous self-congratulatory short tasting notes written in house. Kenwood Vineyards Always a player, this winery has produced great wine on occasion. The 1986 Jack London Cabernet is one of the greatest wines ever made in California. Nice website which lists numerous obscure Zins you never see at stores. Cline Cellars One of the notorious Rhone Ranger wineries also making a slew of unusual Zins done in a Rhone Ranger style. This winery has a lot of fans.

St. Francis Winery Currently one of the great Zinfandel makers in Sonoma County. Nice site. Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association: includes mini-pages for Garr‚ Cedar Mountain Winery,Wente Vineyards, Livermore Valley Cellars, Iv'n Tam's Winery, Thomas Coyne, Stony Ridge Winery, Fenestra Vineyards, Murrieta's Well, Elliston Vineyards. Concannon, Chouinard Vineyards, Retzlaff Vineyards andWestover Vineyards. This is an elaborate and complete site with an incredible Special Events Calendar that includes even the most mundane happening. It makes you want to visit the overlooked Livermore Valley. The only flaw on this site is that many of these wineries have their own web site and these pages are not linked as they should be. Chateau Souverain This winery has come in and out of vogue with ownership changes and inconsistent winemaking. Pedroncelli Winery Functional very reliable wine that is never bad but tends to be boring. The winery brags about its invention in 1958 of Zinfandel Rose, a dubious distinction. Preston Vineyards Another good Sonoma County winery. Windwalker Vineyards Man, this is one obscure winery. I've never heard of them and have never seen their wine. The winery is in Somerset, California. Howell Mountain A site dedicated to two of the great vineyards sitting on Howell Mountain, an area known for great Zinfandel and Cabernet. This is a classic small site set up by Mike Beatty of Beatty Ranch. There is an interesting backgrounder on the grapes and who they used to be sold to.

		David Coffaro A rather discombubulated site that tries to do too much. Includes a fascinating diary, though. The winery makes a blended Zin and other highly praised wines. Crane Canyon Cellars Claiming to be the smallest commercial winery in Sonoma County, these folks produce an old-vines Zin that can only be ordered directly from the winery. Very rare. Ravenswood This 100,000 case winery appears to be a small boutique winery, but it's quite large. Its Zin is a favorite of many. Story Winery Classic Amador County Zin maker. All the wineries in this area should be making better Zins than they make. This site includes a rather weak history of the grape itself leaving out the DNA tracing done recently to track down its origins. Dry Creek Vineyard This winery has not been up to par in recent years from my experience and I've given up on them. But this site is excellent and this particular page devoted to the Heritage clone probably isolates the reason why most Zin today is crappy: UC Davis and the Zin clone it's been promoting for the last 25 years. J. Filipi Winery Looking for a Zinfandel from the Cucamuga Valley? Here's your chance. This Southern California Winery has been in business for years making an old-fashioned style of wine. You're on your own with these wines. J. Fritz Winery This is a rather hard to find winery in Cloverdale making a variety of wines as well as a sometimes interesting Zin.

		Wine Growers of Dry Creek Valley This is an interesting meta-site for a slew of wineries that use grapes from the Dry Creek area or for wineries in the Dry Creek area. Many of these wineries have other websites which this site does not link to. SO it's only good to look up phone numbers. Robert Mondavi, Woodbridge, Byron, Vichon, Luce, LaFamiglia, Vina Caliterra It was hard to imagine Robert Mondavi becoming a conglomerate, but here it is. This Mondavi page links to all the wineries he owns. Zins abound. Geyser Peak Hottest winery in California ever since they brought in an Australian winemaker and an Australian wine style which seems to have a modern appeal. Excellent website too. Napa Valley.com This site is a central location for many Napa Valley wineries. Of particular note is the Sterling site which asks the user to click past a warning page as if it were a porn site or something. Ludicrous. Aull n Aull Web Winery Santa Cruz Wineries This is yet another metasite with small web pages for many of the Santa Cruz mountain and some Monterey County Wineries. Not many Zins in this group. The Temecula Wineries Metasite This obscure area with its obscure wineries has few Zins and instead seems to specialize in a screwball white Cabernet or blush wine to, I assume, move in on the crappy market for White Zinfandel. The term "off dry" is often seen and at least one winery has a Cabernet Sauvignon it recommends be drunk with chocolate desserts. Pathetic.

		Stevenot Winery One of the up and coming Amador County Wineries. Beaulieu Vineyard An elaborate site. The winery is making Zin to get in on the latest craze. Louis Martini Winery Beginning to make some good wines once again. The Zins have been traditionally lackluster. The entire lineup of wines has been recently reorganized and I'd keep an eye on the Gnarly Vines Zin in the "Heritage Collection" Beautiful website. Beringer This is an excellent site with great notes on all the wines. Has a lot of features. A fun website. Sutter Home A weird website with all sorts of interactive features. This is the winery that invented White Zinfandel. Gary Farrell Farrell was the 1996 Red Winemaker of the year and much of this may have been the result of his excellent 1994 Zinfandel although his passion is for Pinot Noir. A very nice website. He is also the winemaker at Davis Bynum.

		Amador Foothill Winery Another one of the up and coming Amador County Wineries. Bianchi Vineyards A central valley winery making an older Italian style of wine. Interesting to a collector. Trentadue Winery One of the great Sonoma Country vineyards and winery. It's generally believed that others who buy grapes from Trentadue make better wine with them than this winery does. Still some excellent wines have come from these people and it's a great stop on a wine tour. Cakebread This winery makes a special Zin only sold at the winery. Very rare. Renwood A newcomer to the scone with one of the most elegant labels in the business. I find the wines a little HOT. Rutherford Hill Winery A generally under-rated winery with some excellent special wines including another Zin you can only buy at the winery.

		Montevina One of the first Amador county wineries to popularize Zinfandel in the mid and late 1970's with spectacular wines. Experiments with Ruby Cabernet were also amazing during this era. Since then the winery has fallen prey to the stupid Italian grape craze and is not nearly as interesting a winery anymore. Stone Creek Winery These folk actually blend ruby Cabernet into their Cabernet Sauvignon. Weird. They have a Zin too. Cuvaison I can still recall the flavors of the great Zinfandels this winery made in the early 1970's. Now, after changing winemakers a number of times its best wine is probably a Merlot. Website much improved since I bitched about it in a PC Magazine column. Not that I had any influence. Nichelini This winery once only made inexpensive Italian style wines and has since gone to a more modern style. Awards and higher prices have been the result. Gabrielli Winery & Vineyard This winery is up in the Redwood Valley of Mendocino County. I've never encountered its wines but see that they have a Zin. The website is a bit amateurish. Robinvale Wines This is an odd place. They make so-called Bio-Dynamic wines outside of Melbourne in Australia. This rebuts anyone who says Zin isn't grown outside of California. To further document the Zin outside of California you should know that Zinfandel is planted in the Umpqua Valley in Oregon and Callahan Ridge Winery makes a Zinfandel wine

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