The Zinfandel Mystery–a dispatch from the road
Since I am leading a retreat up in wine country this week, I decided to share the story of the inspiration for Blood Vine.
Years ago, I stumbled into a tiny tasting room at a winery called Sunce, which is owned by a Croatian family in Sonoma County. I liked the place from the start because their whole operation felt intimate and focused on wine, rather than a gift shop of luxury items.
With lots of big peppery fruit and a high alcohol content, Zinfandel was already my favorite wine, but I didn’t know there was a mystery about the origins of this beloved California grape. In a small, framed news article on the wall at Sunce, I learned that, after years of trying to match the vines, someone had the bright idea of using DNA to trace its roots. And they did—all the way to the tiny picturesque country of Croatia, across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. The whole story captured my imagination, and, years later, I remembered this curious nugget of history at just the right moment when I began to imagine Blood Vine.
In my research, I learned wine has been cultivated in Croatia since the Roman Empire. (Even more interesting—people have been making wine in the Caucasus since 6000 BCE! I totally geek out over that kind of deep history, and yes, it will figure in to the plot of the third Blood Vine book, in the works now.) The true ancestor of Zinfandel is Crljenak Kaštelanski. Only a dozen of these vines were found, the rest having died off in a parasitic epidemic in the nineteenth century. If it weren’t for those straggling survivors, they might never have solved the mystery.
And this is where my historical liberties begin. My vampires hail from the beautiful island of Šolta, where another ancient grape, Dobričić, has its origins. But like me, Andre prefers Zin. His family arrived in California during the gold rush with root balls from their potent vines bundled in sack cloth. The varietal did truly arrive in the U.S. at that time, but not, as far as I know, on a ship with vampire refugees. Around that time, Andre Maras purchased his estate in Sonoma County and named it the Kaštel Estate Winery, an homage to the Croatian name for the Zinfandel grape.
Zinfandel grows in California because we have a mediterranean climate, and Sonoma county has a few microclimates that must be especially Adriatic because the most delicious Zinfandel grapes grow in the Russian River and Dry Creek Valleys. Here are a few of my favorites—big, bloody Zins that make me swoon almost as much as Andre does.
On Friday, when my retreat ends, I plan on making it to a few of these spots. If you’re online then, we can clink glasses via Twitter!
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