2010 Seghesio Sonoma Zinfandel

 After drinking and posting a lot of old world, and specifically Burgundy wines, I thought it was time again to try a wine that is a bit out of my comfort zone. Zinfandel is not my go to wine grape variatal because they tend to be a bit over the top for my palate, but I've had some that pleases me.

Tasting note on the 2010 Seghesio Sonoma Zinfandel:

The nose is loaded with fruit candy and chocolate. The fruit goes towards blackberries, blueberries, but there is also some red cherries here. Actually a better nose than expected. Quite attractive. The wine is full bodied. There is dark fruit and blueberry, leather, chocolate on the palate. The fruit on the palate has a good, fresh feel to it. This is for me important to balance the wine out. It isn't as ripe as many Zinfandels tend to be. On the finnish though, the alcohol starts to show and is bothering me. It's not integrated at all. I also do feel some oak here, but the alcohol is the one thing that stands out on the finnish. 84 points 

This wine really had much going for it. It's got deliciuos fresh fruit and it has a good front and mid palate. It is so sad that the alcohol comes and ruins this experience on the end.

I really had a har time scoring this wine. If I would score this wine based on the nose, the front and mid palate I would have been in the 88-90 point range. If I'd score this based on the finnish it would have been in the 75-78 point range. So I ended up scoring the wine somewhere in between.

The interesting thin here is that when i do some research on the wine I find different alcohol percentages listed. On the back of my bottle it said 15.2%, on my local wine stores website it's listed with 15.5% and on wine.com they say 14%. Perhaps there are different bottlings of the wine. I do believe that in the bottle I had, there alchol must have been 15%+. If it had been at 14%, I think the score would have been much higher.

if you have a higher tolerance for alcohol than me, this is probably a wine you could like. I would though recommend you put it a way in your cellar for at least 3-5 year for optimal drinking. There is some roughness to the tannins on the back end here.