This 2015 Amador County Zinfandel is a commemorative wine. It commemorates the 1965 Amador County Zinfandel made as a home wine that, in 1968, convinced Bob Trinchero of Sutter Home Winery in Napa Valley to begin buying Amador County grapes. A lot has happened in the last fifty years.

The original 1965 Amador Zinfandel was made as a homemade wine by Charles Myers, an English instructor at Sacramento City College, who in 1972 would become a winery owner, opening his Harbor Winery in West Sacramento, CA. Charles’ home winemaking showed Bob Trinchero of Sutter Home how good Amador Zinfandel could be at a time when few wineries actually bought Amador County grapes. Most went to home winemakers in the Bay Area.  At that time there was only one winery in Amador County, D’Agostini, which had been there in one form or another since the 19th century. The first new winery in Amador County was to be Cary Gott’s Monteviña which was created in 1970. By that time, Sutter Home had already produced two vintages of Amador County Zinfandel.

In May, 1968, Bob Trinchero, Charles Myers, and I went to Amador County and drank a bottle of Charles’ 1965 Zinfandel which convinced Bob that he should look to Amador County for grapes. The harvest of 1968 was the first year of a Napa Valley winery using Amador zinfandel and also labeling the wine with the appellation of Amador County. (Christian Brothers and Gallo had been buying Amador grapes at that time, but did not label any wine made from them with the Amador appellation.)  Sutter Home was the first out-of-county winery to label its wine made from Amador grapes with the Amador appellation. Others would follow.

Since I have Charles Myers’ home winemaking notebook, I tried to make the wine following the notes which Charles wrote about making his wine. The grapes in 1965 were picked October 2, fermented with champagne yeast (the most common wine yeast at the time), pressed off on October 8 at 5% Brix, aged in one used small wood cask and in glass demijohns; racked four times during the year, and bottled August 15, 1966, just before Charles resumed teaching. So: very little time on the skins, very little time in wood, early bottling, and no fining or filtering, just the addition of metabisulfite at racking. It was very simple winemaking. According to Charles’ notes, he paid $75.00 the ton for 500 lbs of grapes which gave him 150 bottles of finished wine. This was his first Amador Zinfandel wine. He would make other vintages and in 1972 made his first commercial wine from Amador zinfandel at Harbor Winery.

In making our 2015 Amador Zinfandel, we asked Andis Winery in Amador County to make it for us. Mark McKenna, the winemaker, was enthusiastic about doing this project and used hillside grown, head pruned vines of some 50 years of age, picked September 3, 2015. Fermentation lasted 10 days with Champagne yeast; the wine was pressed at 2% Brix, and some of the new wine put into neutral oak barrels and the rest in flextanks rather than in glass demijohns. It was bottled on September 1, 2016. This production produced 290 cases of 750ml bottles and 10 cases of magnums. The bottles were bottled with Stelvin caps rather than corks since I am a great fan of Stelvin and I think Charles would have concurred. The magnums have corks.

A unique thing about this wine is that the label has a portrait of the original winemaker on it done by the noted Sacramento artist Wayne Thiebaud. In the early 1960s, Wayne and Charles were colleagues at Sacramento City College and in 1963 Wayne painted the image of Charles reading, which is on our label. In Wayne’s opus, the picture is called “Man Reading.” We asked Wayne if he would concede the use of this image for this one time bottling, and he graciously allowed it.

Corti Brothers Amador County Zinfandel 2015 is a sort of mirror of what happened in 1965. Fifty years later, wine tastes have changed and in no small part to the effect Amador County zinfandel had on the California wine market. Tastes changed and there is now a completely different profile of Zinfandel as a wine in California. According to the classic wine texts of the early 1960s and before, Zinfandel was always a light, fruity wine, described as such by most wine writers of the time. Amador County changed all of that. And it was begun by a really well made, homemade wine, from 1965.

If you want to experience the 1968 tasting, then buy a case of this wine to insure you will have some to try when three years old. Very good now, the sip, sip, sipping, may leave you with only a few bottles or none, three years from now.

CORTI BROTHERS AMADOR COUNTY ZINFANDEL 2015 13%  $24.99 750ml        $269.00 cs/12

Featured in our 2016 Holiday Newsletter

At the time, we never imagined that there would another vintage of this commemorative wine. Fast forward seven years, and here it is:

CORTI BROTHERS AMADOR COUNTY ZINFANDEL 2022

In 2015 Corti Brothers had made at Andis winery in Amador County a wine to remember the 50th anniversary of the Amador County Zinfandel made by Charles Myers, a friend in Sacramento who, as a home winemaker, made the 1965 Zinfandel that started Bob Trinchero of Sutter Home Winery in St. Helena on his first vintage of Amador Zinfandel in 1968. Charles is gone, but Bob and I are still here, and the 2015 vintage was a delicious wine. In 2022, I decided to try it again, using Charles’s notes on how he made the 1965 wine. We got lucky. The grapes came from the mature vineyard at the Old Massoni Ranch and were harvested just the day before a heat wave hit Amador county at harvest in 2022. This wine is unusual for the area since it has only 12.5% alcohol naturally. Nothing was added and nothing taken away. As I said, we got lucky. But it only proves that this kind of zinfandel can be made in Amador County, but you have to want to do it. The production was less than the 2015 and is in both bottles and magnums. 

This is a very pretty zinfandel. It is not a zinfandel for the ages, but a delicious drinking wine that will be enjoyable for some time and will give a lot of pleasure. Right now, this is the kind of wine I like to drink. It is not a wine to “make old bones with,” and it is probably not what a lot of zinfandel lovers want to see in the grape. But it is delicious and a bottle in two people may not be enough wine. But it is a very valid style, rarely, if ever found in the area and a stroke of luck in getting it made. With wine, as in life, sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. This is a winner.

The label with Wayne Thiebaud’s painting of Charles Myers reading, called “A man reading” is the same as was used on the 2015 bottling to honor the man who first made the wine.

CORTI  BROTHERS AMADOR COUNTY ZINFANDEL 2022, 12.5% 

$29.99 750ml (#5833)  $323.00 cs/12   (#5833C)  $59.99 magnum (#5834)  $323.00 cs/6  (#5834C) 

Featured in our 2023  Holiday Newsletter