Winemaker focuses on zinfandel
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Heather Munden started her career as a chef. Now, having switched careers, the head of artisanal winemaking at St. Francis winery is always thinking food when making wine.
"I don't want to have a wine that doesn't go with food," she said. "A wine needs to have elegance, substance and acids."
Since 2007, the woman who grew up in Marin County, Calif., wanting to be a lion tamer has been taming the style of St. Francis wines. The Sonoma winery has been known for its big reds - meals in a glass with dense flavors and sometimes high alcohol. These wines can overwhelm, rather the complement, a meal. Founded in the late 1970s, St. Francis championed merlot and, later, syrah. It still does well on those counts, but starting about 20 years ago, the winery embraced zinfandel and Ms. Munden makes several iterations on this quintessentially American grape.
She dotes over small lots of wine made from prized vineyards like a teacher in a small class of gifted students. St. Francis has dibs on many lots of old-vine zinfandel. "Old vine" is an unregulated term, but to Ms. Munden and St. Francis, it means at least 50-year-old vines that are dry farmed and head trained. (Irrigation and wire trellising are relatively recent developments.) As vines age and yields decline, flavors get denser and richer.
Timeless vineyards
"It feels different in these vineyards. You get a different sense of time and space," she said after a visit. "They've been there for World Wars, through earthquakes, one of them even a plane crash."
She's been moving from aggressive American oak barrels favored by many zinfandel makers to the more refined French oak barrels.
One wine that really shows Ms. Munden's influence is St. Francis 2007 Wild Oak Old Vine Zinfandel, made from Sonoma County grapes. Earlier vintages lived up to the name: intense wild, spicy flavors and heavy-handed oak. The 2007 is smooth, even creamy, with raspberry compote and toasty cocoa-vanilla flavors. (Special order in Pennsylvania.) $31.
For the price conscious, there's St. Francis 2006 Red, a blend of merlot, cabernet sauvignon, syrah, with some zinfandel. Fitting the St. Francis house style, it's light bodied but robust, with overripe fruit and cocoa with a black cherry finish. $10.
With some age on it, St. Francis Pagani Vineyard 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel is restrained enough that it could duck into a Bordeaux tasting with its medium body and acidity. Planted in 1908, the vineyard is a "field blend," interspersed with petite syrah, alicante and other grapes. The 2005 is available in the state for $30.
For a conventional zinfandel approach, try the St. Francis workhorse, the Old Vine Zinfandel for $20.
Ms. Munden doesn't think zinfandel will fall from favor as merlot and syrah have. As a wine, zinfandel has a movement, a group (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers), and an identity as America's grape.
"You can't go back in time and plant more old-vine zinfandel," she notes. Grades: Exceptional Above average Good Below average Poor David Falcheck writes a weekly wine column for The Times-Tribune in Scranton. Write
to him at dfalchek@timesshamrock.com.
© The Times-Tribune 2010.
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