Also, this first name **** is for the birds. We're not talking about Cher, or Madonna here.

Stevie apparently respected his athorita.

And Stevie is right where he needed to be.

No one dies for anyone.

Eric asked him to die and he did it?

What?

DJ? Like the DJ Roxalot guy?

I hope SRV got paid a shatload for that.

What a **** joke.

I'll take "Where the **** has AllStarz been" for a thousand, Alex.

Africa.

It's like I tell my kids:

If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.

Ha! No doubt. I've always said it's the creepiest label in the biz.

I think I read that they sell over 20,000 bottles at the retail level around the world per day.

Tastes like they took a nice chardonnay and cut it with water.

It's awesome how the right experience at a tasting, particularly at a vineyard, can be so magical.

It's been nearly seven years since my last trip to Napa. Far too long.

I'll have to keep my eye out for those.

For some reason, I never consider blends in these discussions.

I like The Prisoner, for sure, and drink it somewhat often. I also just tried Abstract, which I liked quite a bit.

I suppose I should throw Paraduxx in there, too, but I probably haven't had any of the last six+ years of that wine.

Oh, there's one called Red & Green, or Green & Red that I tend to serve with brisket. That's pretty good stuff.

I don't seek out Zins very often anymore, but I remember that Hendry and Storybook Mountain were a couple of producers that I'd look for.

That seems true of most wines. Hell, everything, for that matter.

Except maybe Pinot Grigio. I can't dig on that stuff.

My recollection of the article may be wrong, but a browsing of the wiki page supports both your point that it was older than California, but at some point was basically exclusive to California and then almost died during prohibition.

[I]By the middle of the 20th century the origins of California Zinfandel had been forgotten. In 1972, one British wine writer wrote, "there is a fascinating Californian grape, the zinfandel, said to have come from Hungary, but apparently a c??page now unknown there."[19] In 1974 and 1981, American wine writers described it as "a California original, grown nowhere else"[20] and "California's own red grape".[21]

In 1972, Bob Trinchero of the Sutter Home Winery decided to try draining some juice from the vats in order to impart more tannins and color to his Deaver Vineyard Zinfandel. He vinified this juice as a dry wine, and tried to sell it under the name of Oeil de Perdrix, a French wine made by this saign??e method.[22] The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insisted on an English translation, so he added "White Zinfandel" to the name, and sold 220 cases.[22] At the time, demand for white wine exceeeded the availability of white wine grapes, encouraging other California producers to make "white" wine from red grapes, with minimal skin contact.[23] However, in 1975, Trinchero's wine experienced a stuck fermentation, a problem in which the yeast dies off before all the sugar is converted to alcohol.[24] He put the wine aside for two weeks, then tasted it and decided to sell this pinker, sugary wine.[22] Just as Mateus Ros?? had become a huge success in Europe after World War II, this medium sweet White Zinfandel became immensely popular.[24] White Zinfandel still accounts for 9.9% of U.S. wine sales by volume (6.3% by value), six times the sales of red Zinfandel.[3] Most white Zinfandel is made from grapes grown for that purpose in California's Central Valley.

Wine critics considered white Zinfandel to be insipid and uninteresting in the 1970s and 1980s, although modern white Zinfandels have more fruit and less cloying sweetness.[4] Nevertheless, the success of this blush wine saved many old vines in premium areas, which came into their own at the end of the 20th century as red Zinfandel wines came back into fashion. Although the two wines taste dramatically different, both are made from the same (red) grapes, processed in a different way.[/I]

Sort of interesting, if you're into that sort of thing.

To my knowledge, it's a CHEAP blended scotch whisky.