Tasting Note

Ancient Vines Zinfandel shows spicy, bright strawberry, coffee and chocolate characters. Ripe fruit and soft tannins make this a mouth-coating rich vintage. Aging on new and used oak has lent this wine a strong vanilla quality that nicely complements the rich, forward old vine fruit.

Producer

This family-owned vineyard and winery in Sonoma's Carneros Valley was established in 1982 by Fred Cline, descendant of Italian US settlers, having originally founded the winery in Oakly, Contra Costa County, cultivating Rhone varieties and Zinfadel on vines that dated back to 1906.

In the 1990s the family moved their operation to a 350 acre ranch in Carneros Valley and in 2000 they adopted sustainable farming techniques and built the largest solar panelled winerey in California and since 2005 has fully adopted solar energy into it and upgrading the original array with the latest technology in 2018, designed to offset 100% of the winery's electrical consumption. Fred continued to see the potential of Rhone varieties and Zinfandel in his vineyards and produces focused, terroir-driven wines.

Cline is proudly a Certified California Sustainable Vineyard and Winery, being acknowledged for a long-term commitment to continual improvement in the field of sustainable winegrowing and business practices, from grape to glass. Sonoma Country, in which it is located, is committed to becoming the first 100% sustainable wine region in the US by 2019. Fred along with Bob Cannard founded Green String Farm and the Green String method of sustainable farming in 2003, which is a method that meets the highest standard of environmental sustainability practices (which is different from certified organic), reducing soil erosion, pesticide dependency, and loss of biodiversity, and increases resistence to natural predators.

In the place of herbicides, Cline uses sheep and goats that roam the vineyards tasked with removing invasive weeds, and instead of harmful pesticides, they provide owl boxes and raptor perches in the vineyard as these birds of prey are the predators of gophers and mice and help to maintain ecological control. 

They conmost and re-use all digestible organic waste and materials from the winery, including 3,000 tons of grape promace each year, prunings from trees and vines, plus chipped materials from the landscape, which is all turned into biological stimulant and food for the soils. Cline also gronds its own volcanic rock and then spreads the crushed cinder onto the soild to provide the vineyards with a complex array of nutrients and trace minerals, providing the vines with all the necessary components to build fullness of character into the wine.

_{Country: USA | Region: Lodi, California | Alcohol: 14.5% | Grapes: Zinfandel, Carignan | Sustainable | Vegetarian | Vegan | Family Producer | Contains Sulphites}