Dry Creek Valley just can’t get no respect. Lately James Laube, the chief California taster for the Wine Dictator Spectator magazine, has been pointing thumbs-down on the entire appellation, a bucolic stretch of vineyards and dairy farms tucked into the northwestern corner of Sonoma county. Dry Creek, he laments, has an identity problem: it lacks flagship wineries to bolster its reputation, as well as a signature grape to serve as a rallying point for fans.
 
On the occasion of the Winegrowers of Dry Creek Valley’s Passport weekend, I spent last weekend tasting up and down the creek. And although there’s some truth to Laube’s assessment, click here for some important exceptions to the dictator’s rule:
 
First of all, it’s not true that Dry Creek Valley has no “signature grape.” It’s zinfandel, and anyone who actually visits and tastes her way through fifty zins at twenty Dry Creek venues, many of them offered in series of single-vineyard bottlings, all of them made with the pride and care that a Napa vintner would put into her cabernets, will agree.
 
A good example is Ridge Lytton Springs, one of our favorite stamps on our passport. They make two zinfandels, one from the gnarly, 115 year old vines behind the winery and the other from a vineyard called Del Carlo. The Lytton Springs zin was very serious, with gorgeous aromas cherry and pepper aromas, plus a delicious, balanced feel on the palate. Some tannins. Nice long finish too. Plus we loved any zins that came from the Rockpile vineyard, especially Seghesio’s. And although I tasted lots of good cabernet over the weekend — including the culty A. Rafanelli
– thee best wines of the weekend were zins, and in genereal I felt as though when I was drinking them I was tasting Napa cabernets, at one-third the price.
 
For my full report on the wines we tasted, plus the embarrassing fact that among all the big reds we tasted, I came home with a bottle of chardonnay (which one?), stay tuned.