2009 Zinfandel Two Acres

Mike Officer's excitement about the 2009 vintage matched that of just about every other producer I visited in March. "It was kind of unbelievable, actually, especially with a painful year like '08 fresh in our minds," he told me. "The lack of heat spikes meant we were able to watch sugar levels rise without freaking out that they'd scream up or that acid levels would drop out." He said that while "perfection is probably not attainable, philosophically, I do have an idea what it might look like and '09, as a growing season, might have been it, save for a lot of rain in the middle of October." Almost of Officer's grapes had long been picked when the first major storm of the fall (Typhoon Melor, which dumped over 6 inches of rain on the region) hit on October 13th, though. Grapes that he hadn't picked were left hanging until the end of the month, "and we had to be really selective with those."