2023 We Know Jack! Zinfandel Jack Florence Sr. Vineyard Rockpile 750 ml

The Jack Florence Sr. Vineyard sits on a ridge above Lake Sonoma in Rockpile—one of the most compelling addresses for Zinfandel in Sonoma County, and one of the least known outside the people who make wine there. We Know Jack! is the label built to showcase it, and with James MacPhail in the cellar, the 2023 delivers exactly what you'd hope for: rich, structured, and alive with dark fruit and savory complexity.

Rockpile more than earns its name. Rugged, remote, and beautiful, it sits in the hills northwest of Dry Creek Valley, and its defining feature—written into law when it was designated an AVA in 2002—is elevation. The floor of the appellation begins at 800 feet, just above the Lake Sonoma fog line, with most vineyards well above 1,000. Up here, the growing season runs longer and cooler than anything happening down in the valley. The fruit concentrates differently. Rockpile Zinfandels have a tension and a savory mineral edge that lower-elevation wines rarely match.

The Florence family were among the small coalition of growers who successfully petitioned for AVA status in 2002—and the Jack Florence Sr. Vineyard, planted in the late 1990s using cuttings from an 1880s-era Zinfandel planting at St. Peter's Church in nearby Cloverdale, has been farmed by the same family hands ever since. When Mark Zuckerman and Lori Hunt purchased it, they kept the Florences' son on as vineyard manager. The continuity shows in the wine.

For the winemaking, they turned to James MacPhail—a Healdsburg fixture with more than 130 wines at 90 points or above. We Know Jack! is a departure from his usual focus on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and that's part of what makes it interesting. A winemaker this attuned to freshness, structure, and site expression brings a different set of instincts to Zinfandel than the grape usually gets.

The 2023 vintage gave those instincts plenty to work with. A wet winter thoroughly recharged Sonoma's soils, and a cool, slow-moving growing season followed—one of the longest in recent memory, with some growers harvesting into early November. At Rockpile's elevation, that extended hang time allowed the fruit to build real depth without overripening. The wines have structure and acidity to spare, and they're built to go the distance.