For a Winery in Sonoma, California, the Zen of Zin brand (on sale this week for $10.99 at Spirits Unlimited Middletown) is a statement of quality.With its commitment to producing the best Zinfandel that the winery could offer, this full-flavored varietal wine is easy to enjoy with friends and family.
A lot of the quality behind the wine comes from the personality of the winemaker
Joel Peterson. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, Peterson has been a crusader for high standards in wine making.
According to his online biography, Peterson had a working knowledge of European vineyards and vintages, along with a collection of headstrong opinions about what made good wine in his early youth. A graduate of Oregon State University, Peterson was a lab scientist, who made “money through wine writing and consulting, gaining a local reputation as a gifted taster (and tasteless punster).”
As his love for wines grew, Peterson had the opportunity to work with Joseph Swan — one of California's outstanding craftsmen of fine Zinfandel — to learn the art of traditional winemaking as practiced in Bordeaux and Burgundy. In 1976 Peterson founded Ravenswood in partnership with fellow wine lover Reed Foster (a Harvard MBA gone astray) and over the next half-dozen years, their fledgling operation moved from the rear corner of one willing winery to another. When Ravenswood finally turned a profit after a dozen years of operation, they settled on the northern edge of Sonoma, where the winery's tasting room is located, according to the company Web site.
Today, Peterson is known as an articulate spokesman and stylistic trendsetter who helped make Zinfandel the runaway phenomenon that it is today.
