Alexander Valley Vineyards

This winery was a gem. Not much to look at from the outside, but it ended up being one of my favorites.

Then, I taste 3 different zinfandels, each made from different blends of Zin from different areas of the valley.
Temptation was Alexander Valley (30%) Zinfandel has elegant red fruit flavors of raspberry and strawberry, the Suisun Valley (44%) Zinfandel adds ripe, jammy flavors, and the Dry Creek Valley (26%) Zinfandel brings a little structure and black fruit to the blend.

Sin Zin was made entirely from Alexander Valley, while redemption was made from dry creek. The first was the fruitiest of the lot, and my favorite.

Last, we tried the homestead and wine club reserve. The first was their traditional red blend, Merlot 48%, Zinfandel 20%, Grenache 11%, Mourvedre 10%, Cabernet Sauvignon 8%, Syrah 3%. Notes of vanilla, blueberry, spice. Smoother of the two. The club reserve was made by wine club members at a yearly release, where members can make their own blends, and the top one picked by the winemaker is made into a blend for the year. It was Cabernet Sauvignon 72%, Merlot 23%, Cabernet Franc 5%. It had an earthy backbone as defined by the cab, with soda bitterness and blackberry pucker to it. We preferred the homestead.

The capstone of the visit was the cellar tour, which was bored out of the caves. 20k sqft of tunnels are used to age the wine, with barrels lining the walls in very direction as far as we could see. After navigating deeper underground, we sampled the cabernet, one straight from a French oak, and one from a American oak. Despite the French oak being the more expensive of the two, the American oak was smoother. The two are blended together for their release cab.