Sweets to the Sweets And…
Autumn officially begins this Saturday! Mornings are darker and cooler. Leaves are starting to fall. Or in my case, the whole damn tree.
Sadly, this week I had to say goodbye to the kwanzan cherry tree in the front yard of Wiz Manor.
It’s been as wizened as you see it here since I moved in. One of the first vendors I made an appointment with as a new homeowner was to see if it was dead and should I have it taken down.
Even though it’s been putting out leaves and flowers each spring, the trunk was almost totally hollow. I also started to worry about it falling and blocking my driveway (annoying) or taking out my neighbors’ healthy shrub (extremely annoying and potentially complicated, even though my neighbors are totally cool).
After all that hemming and hawing, it took the good people of Princeton Tree Care a whole 20 minutes to reduce it to sawdust. They’ll come back to grind the stump.
It’s yet another one of those things that absolutely made logical sense to do, but I still feel a little bad about it. It really set the tone for the funky little house that greeted me when I first pulled up. I had fun lighting it up for Halloween. I admired its never-give-up attitude.
So let’s pour one out for the old tree. Sweets to the sweets and 2021 Gnarly Head Old Vines Zinfandel to the gnarly.
Gnarly Head has been around since 2004 and is in Lodi, California, east of San Francisco. It’s home to vines that are over 100 years old, like this one.
You see the resemblance, right?
As WineFolly says in their Lodi guide:
You might be wondering, what do these wines taste like?
This is where I have to warn you. You will either love it or love to hate it. Lodi just can’t help it’s bombastic, bold fruit-forward style, so, instead of fighting it, it owns it. One hundred percent. These wines may sometimes look pale in color, but the aromas punch full-force at your nose and the flavors can’t help but smash dance on your palate.
This is a biiiiig zin bomb with a humongous 14.5% alcohol! The color is reddish-purple, with more purple visible when I swirl. I get cherry on the nose, and lots of smoke on the palate. I would decant this for a little while, just to calm down the alcohol, which comes in pretty hot. The texture is a little syrupy, and the finish is short. This is born to go with barbecue, especially tomato-based and a little sweet. As I’ve written about before, Lodi is not my favorite style of zin, but it surely makes a statement!
Thanks for raising a glass with me to the good ol’ Wiz Manor cherry tree. If you try this wine, do let me know in the comments how you liked it. And wishing a meaningful fast to everyone marking Yom Kippur beginning this Sunday!