2008 Zinfandel Papera Ranch

"What I especially like about 2008 is how floral the wines are," Mike Officer told me. "They've got really good concentration but they're much more approachable than the 2007s so they're going to win a lot of friends right off the bat." Carlisle sources a lot of fruit from the RussianRiverValley, which was hit severely by one of the latest periods of frost ever recorded here: on April 21, 23 and 24. "The crop was whacked hard," said Officer, noting that the yield off his own Carlisle vineyard was barely a half ton per acre. Officer told me that his latest obsession is with managing the oak regimen in his cellar "because while good new oak gives the young wine a sexy, sweet quality, I really don't want it to be there when the wine is at its peak, because then it's a distraction." Officer is also especially vigilant with brettanomyces because "brett is the great equalizer and can completely overwhelm any other element, to the point where you have no idea what you're drinking aside from something stinky."