2019 Pareto’s Estate Old Vine Zinfandel, Lodi, California
91 Points and Top 100 Best Buys, Wine & Spirits
Tasting Notes
The Pareto Principle, also called the 80/20 rule, states that 80% of results come from 20% of the effort. This is true in the world of wine, where 80% of the wine is consumed by 20% of the people. With Pareto’s Estate, we raise our glasses to those of us that take up the slack of others. Cheers to the 20%!
With the Sierra Nevada Mountains looming to the east and Pacific Ocean breezes flowing in from the west, Lodi is a preeminent area for rich red wines with deep color and structure. Cool breezes from the San Joaquin/Sacramento River Delta, along with warm days and cool evenings, provide the region with an ideal climate for full-flavored wines with refreshing acidity.
NOSE red aromas of black cherry, raspberry, and allspice with a hint of tobacco and mocha
PALATE medium-bodied, balanced acidity, structured tannins with a lingering cinnamon and red fruit finish
Specs
Vintage: 2019
Appellation: Lodi, California
Alcohol: 13.5%
T.A. g/100 mls: 0.58
Free SO2 (ppm): 40
What’s Included
6-bottles:
6x 2019 Pareto’s Estate Old Vine Zinfandel, Lodi, California
Case:
12x 2019 Pareto’s Estate Old Vine Zinfandel, Lodi, California
The vineyards of Pareto’s Estate are located in the Monterey appellation on California’s central coast. This area is known for having the longest growing season in California, lasting on average about two weeks longer than other regions. We thank the early morning fogs and gusty afternoon winds for this fortunate phenomenon – it wreaks havoc on women’s hairdos but the grapes love it.
We also pay homage to the awesome influence of Monterey Bay, for without its plummeting depth of over 10,000 feet, the fog, chilly air, and reliable breezes wouldn’t exist. And without them, Monterey doesn’t win the prize for the longest hang time. And without the longest hang time, the impeccable fruit that bursts with vibrant aromas and complex flavors would be….let’s not even go there.
A few other facts you should know. At Pareto’s Estate, our wines are 100% estate grown. Estate grown means that the grapes are grown on our vineyards and are crushed each vintage at our winery. Nobody else gets to touch them. Nobody. Yes, we’re control freaks. Another tidbit is that our winery is a thing of beauty. Built in 2005, it is state-of-the-art and absolutely gorgeous if you’re into that sort of thing, which we are. One last factoid – our vineyards are 100% sustainably certified by the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance. We love our vines and take care of them.
Available States
AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IA, KS, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OR, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, WA, WV, WI
How much more are you saving by buying a full case?
(Note: Tax & Shipping not included in savings calculations)
2019 Pareto’s Estate Old Vine Zinfandel - $20 = 16.66%
@chipgreen
Old thread, I know. $67.97 for 6 bottles, $111 for 12 bottles. Comparatively a decent case price savings of $24.94. That’s nearly 3 bottles free in the 12/case pricing, or $2.08/bottle cheaper.
@rjquillin Seems to be definitely Lodi which is usually good for Zin. The winery description blurb must be about the “main” area — but it says their “wines are 100% estate grown” so maybe this is a remote vineyard they control? or maybe it’s just one that’s not part of the 100%?
My Pareto Principle is to avoid wines that remind me of that terrible “business process improvement” fad with all the spreadsheets and bars and graphs when we already knew what we were doing but had to spend extra time making pretty colored images for the clueless upper management.
Good morning casemates. This wonderful treat found its way to me a few nights before heading out of town.
My wife found, and opened the bottle wanting the first taste before I got home. The few words I could get from her were light, spicy, and smooth.
My quick take
The color
ruby red on the edge to dark cherry mid glass
The nose
Peppery, and bright plum with leather.
The taste
Slight spice ripe cherry on my tongues side, not tart, slightly sweet. More bright berry mid tongue. Leather and cigar box. Slight metallic taste lingered for a few minutes after drinking.
Mild on the alcohol and really mild tannins.
Served at about 62 degrees would pair well with beef, game, lamb and barbecue.
A couple of glasses were held back for the second day and didn’t really notice much change. Slightly warmer at 68, milder on the pepper notes, still has strong fruit, berry, cherry notes with the notes of wood or leather.
I would have placed this around the $13 per bottle. I’d call it a good table dinner drinker, or party gift. I would expect much here for age or storage and at the $99 price point I would have been happy to pass this around as a lab gift with the meh cheers bottles.
Typing and doing this on my phone is a challenge if I messed something up I apologize in advance. I’ll be back in the morning. Goodnight
@bdb I manage a research group at Johns Hopkins. Our focus is GI cancer, specially pancreas and liver. Working on vaccines, combinational therapeutics, and epigenetics.
The Wine & Spirits review…category year’s best zinfandel and mixed reds:
91 Points. Best Buy. Classic warm-region zinfandel from Lodi, this wine is juicy and bright from the moment it’s poured. A simple dark-berry scent carries over to its flavors, all delivered with a rich core of fruit that is in no
way baked, and a tangy finish for grilled chicken. Patrick J. Comiskey
and that back label:
If it is indeed estate bottled wouldn’t it be produced and bottled by??
@kaolis Interesting thought/question.
We just need Clark, Scott, Larry or some other with knowledge of label law to to check in.
Yeah, should have tagged them…
Produced and bottled by vs vinted and bottled by. It does seem to be a gray area.
This offer states “At Pareto’s Estate, our wines are 100% estate grown. Estate grown means that the grapes are grown on our vineyards and are crushed each vintage at our winery. Nobody else gets to touch them. Nobody.”
Something to do with Lodi grapes being bottled in Monterey County maybe?
@kaolis Let me explain this case as a way of encouraging y’all to avoid the abstruce labeling regs hoops all winemakers need to jump through. What I’ll explain here is a very tiny tip of the iceberg of convoluted, non-sensical and potentially deceptive regulations that are adjudicated rather arbitrarily by a battery of TTB agents who hand out COLAs (Certificates Of Label Approval).
A whole host of ills ensue from a strain of consumer skepticism that does not exist in far more deceptive industries such as restaurant menus and whiskey. My advice is to find winemakers you like and trust, and don’t judge them on the odd choices they make in this area.
I’m kind of an exception because I enjoy being submitted to the third degree to ultracurious enogeeks such as yourselves as a window on my world.
All wine labels are required to have “xxx and bottled” statement and the city in which the bottling took place. Here are the minimums:
Estate Bottled - 100% produced by fermentation on the premises.
Produced and Bottled - 75%
Made and Bottled - 10%
Vinted and Bottled - 0%
This last was invented by Gallo, who produces about 40% of the wine n the STate, but bottles every drop in Modesto, where no wine is fermented at all. Any other term is equally meaningless:
Cellared and Bottled, Blended and Bottled, Stolen and Bottled, etc.
I personally have used use Vinted and Bottled for everything I made for the last thirty years. I sold my Sebastopol winemaking facility in 2008 and now leave the hose dragging to host wineries who add WineSmith Cellars to their registered trade name list.because I make wines at several facilities (you can guess where they are from the city of bottling, but they all say "Vinted and Bottled by WineSmith Cellars, Podunk, CA or some other city such as Sebastopol, Graton, Kelseyville, Ukiah, Diamond Springs and many others where I custom crush.
None of this relates in any way to “Estate Grown,” “organics,” “made from organically grown grapes” or any other designation relating to the fruit except its appellation of origin, which could vary, as in France,from the highly specific vineyard designated (>95%) to AVA (85%) to County (75%) to State (100%).
The priorities placed on label hype: varietal purity, vintage designation (non-vintage as automatically inferior), a hierarchy of AVAs from ultra-tony to lowly untouchables have all been pointless and counterproductive attempts to legislate quality, all deleterious to quality and value. We winemakers can make way better wine cheaper if we could take these handcuffs off and just make the best wines possible.
@kaolis@winesmith So Clark, does the “xxx and bottled” percentage refer to the percentage of wine fermented at the bottling site? If so, what an odd designation. Who cares where it’s bottled? It’s all about where the grapes are from and, according to some, how far they travel from vineyard to crush facility.
What’s your opinion, if any, on the VQA system in Ontario and British Columbia?
And what’s the problem with truthfulness in whiskey labelling? Or are you referring to the fact that the distilling could be done by any old Joe and bottled under whatever name with no knowledge of who actually made the spirit or where the grain was grown?
@kaolis@klezman Yes, it’s the percentage of the wine that was produced by fermentation on the bottling bonded premises. I think the logic was to make a distinction between wines bought on the bulk market and those produced by the winery itself, though the distinction ceased to have any real meaning fifty years ago.If you think that’s odd, you haven’t had enough experience with Federal beaurocracy.
In TTB’s defense, they really are doing the best they can and at least behave like professionals, whereas State agencies are pretty much cronies and clowns and understaffed as well.
The VQA system certainly has its flaws too, but it’s good that they have one. Same problem really. Until recently, Canadian wine could be largely from another country, so the VQA system was implemented to make finer distinctions, similar to the Regisseurs d’Appellation in Bordeaux. I think they are a bit vinifera-racist in allowing only Chambourcin as a hybrid.
Same thing in Japan. Until recently, a Japanese wine only needed to be a tiny percentage from Japan.
While a wine can only be called ‘English’ if it is made from grapes grown in England, ‘British’ wine can be made from grapes grown elsewhere, so long as the juice is fermented and bottled in the UK. Many of the grapes used for the making of ‘British’ wine come from Spain, Romania and Bulgaria.
Texas is experiencing a similar schism between 100% Texas-made and grapes or bulk wine bottled in Texas.
The whiskey industry has been divided between purists and scoundrels throughout its history. Only Bottled in Bond whiskies really have any authenticity of origin and hardly anybody distills their own stuff. So the real issue is whether the rectification involves adjuncts and additives. Two great full reads on the ensuing life and death struggles on this subject are Bourbon: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of an American Whiskey
and Bourbon Empire: The Past And Future Of America’s Whiskey: History Of American Bourbon. Note along the way that although their names never appear on labels, Jewish rectifiers are the real dynasties of whiskeymaking who deserve much more recognition.
2019 Pareto’s Estate Old Vine Zinfandel, Lodi, California
91 Points and Top 100 Best Buys, Wine & Spirits
Tasting Notes
Specs
What’s Included
6-bottles:
Case:
Price Comparison
Not for sale online, $180/case MSRP
About The Winery
Pareto’s Estate Winery
Available States
AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IA, KS, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OR, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, WA, WV, WI
Estimated Delivery
Tuesday, Jan 18 - Thursday, Jan 20
2019 Pareto’s Estate Old Vine Zinfandel
6 bottles for $59.99 $10/bottle + $1.33/bottle shipping
Case of 12 for $99.99 $8.33/bottle + $1/bottle shipping
How much more are you saving by buying a full case?
(Note: Tax & Shipping not included in savings calculations)
2019 Pareto’s Estate Old Vine Zinfandel - $20 = 16.66%
@chipgreen
Old thread, I know. $67.97 for 6 bottles, $111 for 12 bottles. Comparatively a decent case price savings of $24.94. That’s nearly 3 bottles free in the 12/case pricing, or $2.08/bottle cheaper.
Since when is Lodi in
@rjquillin Seems to be definitely Lodi which is usually good for Zin. The winery description blurb must be about the “main” area — but it says their “wines are 100% estate grown” so maybe this is a remote vineyard they control? or maybe it’s just one that’s not part of the 100%?
My Pareto Principle is to avoid wines that remind me of that terrible “business process improvement” fad with all the spreadsheets and bars and graphs when we already knew what we were doing but had to spend extra time making pretty colored images for the clueless upper management.
@pmarin I agree with you about 80% of the time, but the other 20%…
Good morning casemates. This wonderful treat found its way to me a few nights before heading out of town.
My wife found, and opened the bottle wanting the first taste before I got home. The few words I could get from her were light, spicy, and smooth.
My quick take
The color
ruby red on the edge to dark cherry mid glass
The nose
Peppery, and bright plum with leather.
The taste
Slight spice ripe cherry on my tongues side, not tart, slightly sweet. More bright berry mid tongue. Leather and cigar box. Slight metallic taste lingered for a few minutes after drinking.
Mild on the alcohol and really mild tannins.
Served at about 62 degrees would pair well with beef, game, lamb and barbecue.
A couple of glasses were held back for the second day and didn’t really notice much change. Slightly warmer at 68, milder on the pepper notes, still has strong fruit, berry, cherry notes with the notes of wood or leather.
I would have placed this around the $13 per bottle. I’d call it a good table dinner drinker, or party gift. I would expect much here for age or storage and at the $99 price point I would have been happy to pass this around as a lab gift with the meh cheers bottles.
Typing and doing this on my phone is a challenge if I messed something up I apologize in advance. I’ll be back in the morning. Goodnight
@jml326 What sort of lab work do you do?
@bdb I manage a research group at Johns Hopkins. Our focus is GI cancer, specially pancreas and liver. Working on vaccines, combinational therapeutics, and epigenetics.
@jml326 thanks for the review! Any chance you could snag a photo of the back of the bottle?
@radiolysis sorry no.
@jml326 thank you for the report
Meh, why not!
/giphy happiest-peaceful-yuletide
Why not, indeed!
/giphy iconic-festooned-donkey
@cleluvswootwine
The Wine & Spirits review…category year’s best zinfandel and mixed reds:
91 Points. Best Buy. Classic warm-region zinfandel from Lodi, this wine is juicy and bright from the moment it’s poured. A simple dark-berry scent carries over to its flavors, all delivered with a rich core of fruit that is in no
way baked, and a tangy finish for grilled chicken. Patrick J. Comiskey
and that back label:
If it is indeed estate bottled wouldn’t it be produced and bottled by??
fwiw
@kaolis Interesting thought/question.
We just need Clark, Scott, Larry or some other with knowledge of label law to to check in.
Yeah, should have tagged them…
@rjquillin @tercerowines @winesmith Label law question…
Produced and bottled by vs vinted and bottled by. It does seem to be a gray area.
This offer states “At Pareto’s Estate, our wines are 100% estate grown. Estate grown means that the grapes are grown on our vineyards and are crushed each vintage at our winery. Nobody else gets to touch them. Nobody.”
Something to do with Lodi grapes being bottled in Monterey County maybe?
@kaolis Let me explain this case as a way of encouraging y’all to avoid the abstruce labeling regs hoops all winemakers need to jump through. What I’ll explain here is a very tiny tip of the iceberg of convoluted, non-sensical and potentially deceptive regulations that are adjudicated rather arbitrarily by a battery of TTB agents who hand out COLAs (Certificates Of Label Approval).
A whole host of ills ensue from a strain of consumer skepticism that does not exist in far more deceptive industries such as restaurant menus and whiskey. My advice is to find winemakers you like and trust, and don’t judge them on the odd choices they make in this area.
I’m kind of an exception because I enjoy being submitted to the third degree to ultracurious enogeeks such as yourselves as a window on my world.
All wine labels are required to have “xxx and bottled” statement and the city in which the bottling took place. Here are the minimums:
Estate Bottled - 100% produced by fermentation on the premises.
Produced and Bottled - 75%
Made and Bottled - 10%
Vinted and Bottled - 0%
This last was invented by Gallo, who produces about 40% of the wine n the STate, but bottles every drop in Modesto, where no wine is fermented at all. Any other term is equally meaningless:
Cellared and Bottled, Blended and Bottled, Stolen and Bottled, etc.
I personally have used use Vinted and Bottled for everything I made for the last thirty years. I sold my Sebastopol winemaking facility in 2008 and now leave the hose dragging to host wineries who add WineSmith Cellars to their registered trade name list.because I make wines at several facilities (you can guess where they are from the city of bottling, but they all say "Vinted and Bottled by WineSmith Cellars, Podunk, CA or some other city such as Sebastopol, Graton, Kelseyville, Ukiah, Diamond Springs and many others where I custom crush.
None of this relates in any way to “Estate Grown,” “organics,” “made from organically grown grapes” or any other designation relating to the fruit except its appellation of origin, which could vary, as in France,from the highly specific vineyard designated (>95%) to AVA (85%) to County (75%) to State (100%).
The priorities placed on label hype: varietal purity, vintage designation (non-vintage as automatically inferior), a hierarchy of AVAs from ultra-tony to lowly untouchables have all been pointless and counterproductive attempts to legislate quality, all deleterious to quality and value. We winemakers can make way better wine cheaper if we could take these handcuffs off and just make the best wines possible.
@kaolis @winesmith So Clark, does the “xxx and bottled” percentage refer to the percentage of wine fermented at the bottling site? If so, what an odd designation. Who cares where it’s bottled? It’s all about where the grapes are from and, according to some, how far they travel from vineyard to crush facility.
What’s your opinion, if any, on the VQA system in Ontario and British Columbia?
And what’s the problem with truthfulness in whiskey labelling? Or are you referring to the fact that the distilling could be done by any old Joe and bottled under whatever name with no knowledge of who actually made the spirit or where the grain was grown?
@kaolis @klezman Yes, it’s the percentage of the wine that was produced by fermentation on the bottling bonded premises. I think the logic was to make a distinction between wines bought on the bulk market and those produced by the winery itself, though the distinction ceased to have any real meaning fifty years ago.If you think that’s odd, you haven’t had enough experience with Federal beaurocracy.
In TTB’s defense, they really are doing the best they can and at least behave like professionals, whereas State agencies are pretty much cronies and clowns and understaffed as well.
The VQA system certainly has its flaws too, but it’s good that they have one. Same problem really. Until recently, Canadian wine could be largely from another country, so the VQA system was implemented to make finer distinctions, similar to the Regisseurs d’Appellation in Bordeaux. I think they are a bit vinifera-racist in allowing only Chambourcin as a hybrid.
Same thing in Japan. Until recently, a Japanese wine only needed to be a tiny percentage from Japan.
While a wine can only be called ‘English’ if it is made from grapes grown in England, ‘British’ wine can be made from grapes grown elsewhere, so long as the juice is fermented and bottled in the UK. Many of the grapes used for the making of ‘British’ wine come from Spain, Romania and Bulgaria.
Texas is experiencing a similar schism between 100% Texas-made and grapes or bulk wine bottled in Texas.
The whiskey industry has been divided between purists and scoundrels throughout its history. Only Bottled in Bond whiskies really have any authenticity of origin and hardly anybody distills their own stuff. So the real issue is whether the rectification involves adjuncts and additives. Two great full reads on the ensuing life and death struggles on this subject are Bourbon: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of an American Whiskey
and Bourbon Empire: The Past And Future Of America’s Whiskey: History Of American Bourbon. Note along the way that although their names never appear on labels, Jewish rectifiers are the real dynasties of whiskeymaking who deserve much more recognition.