Muccigrosso Vineyards

Michael Muccigrosso names this wine for his lovely and indefatigable wife, Lyn, who keeps asking year after year: “are we making any money yet?” She loves the wine, but honestly, do the math. For this hardy mountain couple, so typical of the diehards you find here in the Santa Cruz Mountains, it’s hard to quantify success in terms of dollars. They so love the whole camaraderie of the high altitude vine life. There’s such an extreme challenge involved in growing grapes in this terroir, with its wild and crazy swing that can see temps go from 114 to 20 in a 4-month period. At the estate vineyard, Michael is typically harvesting Zin late, late and even later. Sometimes not at all.

Lyn Zin is composed of a tiny bit of fruit from the Muccigrosso Estate, which is in the “banana belt” of the Santa Cruz Mountains, with the majority of it coming from Wayne Weidman's Vineyard on the backside of Hecker Pass in Santa Clara, as well as some from Stan Moniz’s vineyard on the east side of 101 in Morgan Hill. This is a great marriage: the Wiedeman Zin produces notoriously high acid fruit, the Moniz Zin, from head-trained per-Prohibition vines, contributes sweet molasses, while the Muccigrosso Zin is naturally high in acid and filled with lovely pepper.

Winemaker Jake Kaufman says that all these ingredients make for a rich naturally acidulated Zinfandel that offers a everything you like about Zin, with none of the downsides. This is one Zin you can drink without burning your nose hairs.

Reviewed April 2, 2008 by Laura Ness.