White Zinfandel
White Zinfandel, often abbreviated as White Zin, is a dry to sweet, pink-colored blush wine. White Zinfandel is made from the Zinfandel wine grape, which would otherwise produce a bold and spicy red wine. White Zinfandel is not a grape variety but a method of processing Zinfandel grapes. As of February 2006, White Zinfandel accounted for 10% of all wine sold by volume, making it the third most popular varietal in the United States, outselling Red Zinfandel 6:1 by volume.
History of White Zinfandel
Zinfandel was first made into a rosé wine in 1869 by the El Pinal Winery in Lodi, California. The resulting wine was thought of highly enough that California viticultural commissioner Charles Wetmore, the later founder of Cresta Blanca Winery, advocated Zinfandel's use as a white wine grape.
In the 1970s Sutter Home Winery was a producer of premium Zinfandel red wine in the Napa Valley. To increase concentration in their wines, they used the saignée technique to bleed off some of the grape juice before fermentation, to increase the impact of compounds in the skins on the remaining wine. The excess juice was separately fermented into a dry, almost white wine that Sutter Home called "White Zinfandel."
