When I was new to wine-writing, I remember going to a tasting and pronouncing it “zinfandle”. “Zinfan-dell!” a supercilious colleague corrected me, and I felt like falling through the floor. And that still makes me feel particularly sympathetic to people who pronounce grape and wine names incorrectly. I mean, why would they know and does it even matter? It’s just another example of the kind of one-upmanship that has beset the wine industry for years, and accounts for its reputation for snobbishness.
That said, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for zin (that’s one way to get around the pronunciation problem), something of a signature US grape variety. While you can get practically every other wine that California produces more cheaply elsewhere (pinot noir, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon from Chile, for example), no one else (or practically no one) does zinfandel.
