2016 Old Vines Zinfandel St Francis Winery

Enjoying a glass of old vine Zinfandel is enjoyable. But sometimes bad things happen to a bottle of wine. St. Francis winery is a well-established California vineyard. The winery produces award winning Zinfandel and other varietals; many get ratings of 90 points. I am familiar with St. Francis Winery’s quality products. “CORKAGE”: When I opened this bottle, the cork crumbled; wine had seeped along its sides all the way to the top. Air and humidity defeated its stopper. O.K. The main reason writing about this particular bottle is in defense of winemakers. A winemaker may be as vigilant as the dickens with growing, harvesting, production and bottling. But as soon as a bottle leaves the vineyard, mysterious events can happen. Because of this corkage, I am speculating carelessness during shipping. Someplace, transport was too hot or too cold; cases could have sat on an outside dock, etc. Careless handling after leaving a winery is no fault of a winemaker. An FYI: We live in the Kansas City area, where weather runs in extremes. The summers are too hot; the winters too cold for shipping. That leaves only two seasonal windows for wine shipments: six weeks in the Spring and six weeks in the Fall. Wine hates motion, light, and too cold or too hot temperatures. My own experience taught me not to belong to a wine club, because they always ship their stuff regardless. Plus, there are so many excellent wines from many great wineries. So, why not expand buying? WineValentine.com writes about off-the-shelf wine purchases. Our real time, here-and-now write-ups differ from several others. Ours isn’t a unique visit to a winery, with a varietal spooned from a vat. A genuine experience, here is an unusual incident of one ruined bottle of good wine. Not being able to drink the ‘16 Old Vine Zen was damned disappointing! Speculating deeper, I wonder how many other bottles were ruined in that shipment? It is annoying. Plus, I am sympathetic toward the St. Francis winemaker, because this single ruined bottle does not reflect that vineyard’s usual high quality.