The most expensive cuvee here, the 2004 Zinfandel Grandpere, is an outstanding effort. There are 3,000 cases of this blend of 86% Zinfandel, 7% Alicante, 5% Barbera, and 2% Syrah. Offering oodles of strawberry and black cherry fruit intermixed with smoked herbs, new saddle leather, spice box, and pepper, excellent texture, outstanding purity and richness, and a long, savory, full-throttle mouthfeel, it will provide sumptuous drinking over the next 4-5 years. Tel. (800) 348-8466

Shows pleasurable cherry, raspberry, blackberry, coffee, cola and dusty spice flavors that are complex in their own way. But the wine is overly soft in both tannins and acids, leaving all that fruit out there to fend for itself, without balancing structure.——S.H.(9/1/2007)—— 84