2012 Ballentine Zinfandel Old Vines Block 11 Napa Valley 750 ml

2012 Ballentine Zinfandel Pocai Vineyard Napa Valley … and Phylloxera-Resistant St. George Rootstock

In the 19th century, in the tiny village of Pujaut in the Languedoc, botanists discovered a tiny sap-sucking insect that was feeding on the village’s vines. At varying speeds, depending on soil content and rootstock, the aphid-like pest deformed roots, cutting off the flow of water and nutrients.

Phylloxera moved quickly, ravaging the vineyards of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the Loire. In just 15 years between 1875 and 1889, French wine production shrunk from 85 million hectoliters to just 23 million. Modern estimates suggest that as much as 90% of France’s vineyards were destroyed.

In an effort to stem the tide, the plant scientists began researching not only the pest’s origins, but how it had made its way to France. It wouldn’t be long before they traced Phylloxera’s origins to the United States, and more specifically to some overly eager Victorian Age botanists who had inadvertently transported infected American rootstock to France.

While it’s almost unimaginable today, back in the late 1950s and 1960s, barely a winery in Napa Valley was selling a bottle for more than five bucks. In an effort to keep production costs down so as to make wine drinkers out of Budweiser guzzlers, and fully cognizant of the risk in planting rootstock that wasn’t fully Phylloxera-resistant, Napa Valley growers rolled the dice.

For almost 30 years, higher yields helped pump cash flow into winery balance sheets. But then, in 1983, the same sap-sucking insect that had single-handedly uprooted the vineyards of Lafite- and Mouton-Rothschild was discovered in California. It wouldn’t be long before Napa Valley got its comeuppance.

Between the mid-’80s and early ‘90s, infected Napa Valley vineyards were replanted. Most growers took the opportunity to replace extraordinary Zinfandel parcels with more lucrative Cabernet Sauvignon. Just a few of those Zinfandel plantings were left intact — almost all planted on Phylloxera-resistant St. George rootstock — few more remarkable or more perfectly situated than the Ballentine family’s Pocai Vineyard.

 

Historic Pocai Vineyard: Next Door to Duckhorn Three Palms

In 1906, Libero Pocai purchased 60 acres of open fields dotted with gnarly oak trees. Just next door was a property owned by Lillie Hitchcock Coit, the San Francisco socialite who had been famously rescued from a hotel blaze in 1951. While Coit became the patron saint of the city fire department, her Napa Valley property went on to become home to Duckhorn’s Three Palms Vineyard.

Just across the way, in the 1950s, the Pocai Vineyard was planted to head-trained Zinfandel on St. George rootstock. While nearly every vineyard in this blue-chip neighborhood was destroyed by Phylloxera and replanted to Cabernet Sauvignon, the Pocai Zinfandel Vineyard survived.

In the remarkably dry but mild 2012 vintage, the deep-rooted Pocai Vineyard shrugged off the drought and the potential for hydric stress, quenching its thirst deep in the substrata. In a growing season absent any significant heat spikes, at harvest the normally irregularly sized Zinfandel clusters were perfectly uniform. Sugars were sky high, even as acids remained firm. The Ballentines believe their 2012 to be the finest Zinfandel every harvested off this historic property. They’ll get no argument from us.

The 2012 Ballentine Zinfandel comes in at a lofty 15.5% alcohol, yet there’s absolutely no sign of heat! Dark purple-black to the rim, infused with voluptuous aromas of black raspberry, crushed blackberries, violets, and sweet spice. Rich, dense, massively concentrated yet still somehow high-toned and light on its feet, packed with black fruit preserves, splashed with sweet créme de cassis, finishing with the persistence only found in Zinfandels drawn from vines of over 50 years of age. Drink now for its primary-fruit hedonism or lay down until 2020.

$28 on release. $19 today — ONLY on WineAccess. Shipping included on 6.