2016 Radio-Coteau Zinfandel Lemorel Estate

The intoxicating coolness of this wine is hard to resist. And that cool charge delivers facets of California wine that only zinfandel can achieve. One is the particular way this wine develops with air, starting out as a tense, floral red that combines the scent of spring roses with the textural pleasure of a summer peach. From there, it only gets better, offer_ing a bright, lively burst of blueberry flavor on the second day, its cushioned elegance transformed into a powerful wave, crest_ing with coastal intensity on day three. The other zin identifier is how there are no lines or guardrails to the structure, an outcome of the variety’s thin skins and this wine’s old_-vine concentration, making it feel wild and unselfconscious, the way a dancer, knowing the choreography so well, might completely inhabit a dance, electrifying the stage and expanding the space indefinitely. You won’t find many examples of a wine like this, and it only came about by the commitment Eric Sussman has made to these vines, one parcel dating to 1946 (planted by Lee Morelli), the other to 1981 (Robert von Weidlich’s plant_ing). Together, those vines provided Suss_man’s first Radio-Coteau release in 2002. He purchased the property in 2012 and has since developed it as a biodynamic farm, an activ_ity that has, if flavor is evidence, energized those old vines and the wine from the fruit they give.