2020 Clay Shannon Zinfandel Junior Lake County 750 ml

The $20, high-quality Napa Zinfandel is a nearly extinct species.

But that’s been obvious for a while now…so the smart money has been steadily moving north.

They’re headed to Lake County, directly above Napa, which boasts the rocky terroir and warm climate perfect for growing powerful red wine. Recent years have seen the arrival of luminaries like Andy Beckstoffer—the same Beckstoffer who farms a score of waiting-list-only vineyards for $500 Cabernet in Napa—but Clay Shannon got there first.

Shannon realized the potential for the region early on—despite the area’s remoteness and challenging terrain—so in 1996 he bought over 2,000 acres on a series of wild, rocky slopes at an extreme 2,500+ feet of elevation, overlooking California’s largest natural lake.

This is a big wine, befitting a big estate and the big vision of its owner, Clay Shannon. It’s that ambition—to be one of the greatest, grandest wineries of the next generation—that has attracted folks like our Master Sommelier, Sur Lucero, who had to visit Lake County to see the remarkable property for himself.

Shannon’s vision of growth is not rooted in branding or marketing, but in the land itself. He's working to create a self-sustaining farm that requires little in the way of agricultural inputs from outside his property. No herbicides are used, and a herd of sheep, complete with 13 rams, graze through the carbon-trapping cover crops that intersperse the rows of vines and also enrich the soil with manure.