2018 Zo Wines Zinfandel Triple Ten Vineyard Dry Creek Valley 750 ml

During the mid-19th century, resourceful European immigrants who had come to California hoping to make their fortunes in the Gold Rush settled in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, where they discovered a treasure of a different kind: the area’s incredible capacity for cultivating wine—and especially Zinfandel.

In 1919, Prohibition slammed the brakes on the area’s burgeoning wine industry, and winegrowing remained all but forgotten until the 1960s and 70s. Today, however, amidst a growing renaissance of Golden State Zin, Dry Creek Valley has once again become a golden utopia for the grape, with many of California’s most iconic producers calling the region home.

Among the latest generation of treasure-hunters to strike gold in Dry Creek Valley, owner, grower, and chief winemaker David Eckert established ZO Wines with the mission of rekindling Zin’s historic legacy. Farmed from his estate’s 10.7-acre Triple Ten Vineyard—a prime slice of terroir nestled northwest of Healdsburg—this lush, bold, and exquisitely balanced 2018 offers a fascinating glimpse of California’s past laying the ground for its future—or, as Wine Spectator put it, “old school meets new.”

The ZO Triple Ten is Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel done to perfection, combining the complexity and utter drinkability we adore in California’s top expressions of the grape. Ripe, juicy, and full of concentrated black-fruit intensity cradled by silky tannins, it’s a testament to Eckert’s mastery in both the vineyard and the cellar, revealing all the reasons why Dry Creek has been a holy ground for Zinfandel for over a century and a half.