Zinfandel gets a bad rap — it had a juice-bomb 'Sin Zin' moment in the early 2000s, with all-oak, all Mega-Purple, no balance or lift in the vast majority of the grocery store versions of this variety in California. But it's not a fair assessment of the entire variety, whose parentage is from the Mediterranean (it's related to the older varieties Primitivo and Croatia's Plavac Mali). Ryan Stirm makes this Zinfandel from off the special, windy, old-vine vineyard Wirz; it's done whole-cluster in an open-top redwood fermenter and blended with a little dash of Riesling (!) at the end for a touch of aromatic lift. Full fruit, to be sure, but with beautiful woodsy notes and a transparency of which most winemaking folks in Cali would be jealous. Beautiful stuff!