Animale Zinfandel is a Wild Animal

I usually shy away from wine labels with animals on them for the obvious reason - they're just dumb! But tonight I'm making an exception. Mainly, because a friend brought this one over to my house tonight to drink with our dinner. We drank this with the meatloaf I made (and I make a HELLA meatloaf if I do say so myself) for dinner tonight. Okay, we actually drank a bottle of DeLille Bordeaux style wine with dinner that my good friend and fellow wino, Gary, brought over but after dinner was over, we uncorked the other bottle he brought called Animale. Don't get me wrong. The DeLille wine was really very nice. Elegant and understated. After it opened up a bit it was even better. Duh. But this 2006 Animale Zinfandel was a different animal altogether (sorry, had to go there). It was more than just different - it was surprising and made me feel like a kid in a candy store. Why was that? Because it reminded me of grape flavored Jolly Ranchers. This wine is an interesting combination of varietals: 87% Zinfandel, 8% Syrah, 3% Grenache, and 2% Petite Sirah. All of the grapes come from Columbia Valley in eastern Washington but the wine is produced and bottled by Animale in Seattle. The wine is unfined and unfiltered so they don't fiddle with the wine like some wineries do making this wine similar in style to European wines. This small winery produces only 200 cases of wine per year so I feel extremely fortunate that I was able to share this wine with my generous friend tonight. YAY Washington! Another winner, in my book!! And I even kind of like the artistic rendering of the cat on the label.

Hats off to you, Gary! Thank you for bringing over two very different, but incredibly delicious Washington wines tonight to share. I hope you enjoyed the meatloaf and the company tonight. I most certainly did!