Robert Biale, Black Chicken Zinfandel 2021

Black Chicken Zinfandel is the flagship and has become a benchmark for the variety. Sourced from the same family vineyard on the Biale estate that Aldo, Nonna, and Bob Biale have farmed their whole lives with additional grapes from their neighbouring winery vineyard in the Oak Knoll District, Black Chicken is a superb expression of Zinfandel from the cool southern Napa Valley, and an icon of Napa Valley Zinfandel in general. Hand-picked and hand sorted for the best fruit, grapes crushed and gravity fed into open-top tanks. The must cold-soaked for 2-4 days at 10ËšC and inoculated with cultivated yeast strains. Two to three punch downs per day for colour and tannin extraction. Fermentation usually complete after fourteen to sixteen days at a maximum temperature of 30ËšC. At dryness, lightly pressed to 100% Burgundy oak barrels of which 20% are new and aged for fourteen months.

Aldo Biale used to help his mother make ends meet by selling the family’s bootleg Zinfandel along with eggs and other farm produce, back in the 1940s. When customers rang in their orders over the open phone line they shared with their neighbours, the words “Black Chicken” used to be code for a jug of Aldo’s secret Zin. In 1991, Bob Biale, together with his partners Dave Pramuk, Al Perry and father Aldo Biale launched Robert Biale Vineyards on the site in the Oak Knoll AVA where Aldo’s father, Pietro, had had the foresight to plant Zinfandel vines in 1937, only four years after the repeal of Prohibition.