THE BLENDMASTER OF ZIN

Every year winemakers and industry members choose a Blendmaster to create the wine that best represents Paso Robles Zinfandel producers. Is it pressure? Maybe. Is it an honor. You bet. Does the chosen winemaker love the challenge. Indeed he does. Hear this year's Zin Blendmaster, Alex Villicana, explain how it all works."I’m Alex Villicana with Villacana Winery... it’s a small family winery that my wife and I started back in 1997. This year for the Zinfandel Festival I’m actually going to be
the 2009 Zinfandel Festival Blendmaster. It is an honor. It’s basically the winemakers and the people in the industry who select you to be the blendmaster and so it was an honor that they were confident that I could deliver a zinfandel that they would proud of serving to people who attend our festival. and so I’m in charge of putting the collaborative blend together that will poured at the grand tasting as well as a number of the auction lots with the large format bottles  What happens for the collaborative blend number of the different wineries that specialize in zinfandel basically contribute different lots of their zinfandel. Generally they pick out their best lot that they have you’re really showing off paso robles and you’re showing off your wines.  It’s my responsibility to basically go through all of those wines and make sure that you put them together in such a way that really produces a zinfandel that shows off the area. And so I get the wines about six months ago and basically I get them put the blend together and get them in barrel,make sure the wine is stable and ready to bottle. We just had them bottled last week and my job is almost done. It worked out to be roughly to about three barrels that we out together. Most producers contributed about five gallons apiece and so there were quite a few different lots that we had to put together.There was about forty different producers this year who contributed wine and it was from all over Paso Robles and that was a really fun thing too because I got to try all of the different wines coming from all of the different vineyards from throughout the area. and there’s a huge difference in Zinfandels coming from east Paso Robles and west Paso Robles and down the Templeton Gap and there’s so many micro-climates in this area and zinfandel is highly affected by those micr-climates. I went through the wines and picked those that would most positively affect the final blend producing a wine that really shows off the Paso Robles fruit.. It’s a fantastic variety it’s very very much the Paso Robles style of rich robust fruit and some of that neat spiciness and it really is a fantastic variety. I actually went with American oak barrels this year the reason I like the American oak barrels with zinfandel is that they tend to contribute a little bit more of spice characteristics that I like in my style of zinfandel and I think that’s the one thing nice things about being the blendmaster is that each different winemaker has their different take on the style of zinfandel. Some people like to enhance the jammy characteristics of the wine. My specific style is that I like layers of complexity. I like the fruit but I also like it accented by a little bit of spice.
I think the American oak barrels that I used three different cooperage's and I used three different ages of barrels so I didn’t use too much oak but it added some nice elements a little bit of vanilla a little bit of clove and cinnamon characteristics that I think really enhance the rich raspberry and plum fruit that you get in the wine.  I think it’s a fantastic example of the wines coming put of this area. It’s kind of a mix of the two different styles you see coming out of this area. You get some that rich fruit from the east side Zinfandels and then you get some of that west side pepperyness as well. It’s a neat blend of all Paso Robles fruit.  I think they are going to be pretty happy with the way it turned out. The people I have poured it for so far have been really excited and it’s been one of their favorites so far