2021 Marietta Cellars Zinfandel Roman Estate Grown North Coast

Year in and out, Wine Advocate’s 95+ point Zinfandel echelon is almost solely occupied by the super-elites: $50–$150 wines from names like Williams-Selyem, Martinelli, and Turley.

In the 2021 vintage, Marietta crashed their party.

Wine Advocate crowned their 2021 Marietta Cellars Román Estate Grown Zinfandel with a staggering 95-point score, raving about its “tremendous quality for its modest price.” With most of its fruit coming from Angeli Ranch, originally planted in 1886, it boasts gorgeous aromatic intensity, old-vine sappiness, and a silky smoothness that puts it right alongside California’s best.

Founded in 1978 by Chris Bilbro, now in the hands of his sons, Jake and Scot, Marietta has focused on quality at reasonable pricing from the very beginning. They started with their spectacular Old Vine Red, a “mixed blacks” blend that quickly became a company calling card.

Today the winery owns and farms 400 acres of their own vines organically, having acquired Limerick Lane Winery and McDowell Valley Vineyards in 2011 and 2012, respectively. They have a year-round team of dedicated vineyard and winery workers, most of whom have worked for them for decades, and today’s wine is an homage to one of them: cellarmaster Román Cisneros, who has worked at Marietta for over 32 years.

The first thing that strikes you about the 2021 Román is its staggering perfumes and fruit aromas, such as fresh-picked raspberries, orange zest, white pepper, crème de cassis, and violets. Not a bruiser by any means, it has an ethereal texture that offers up loads of black cherry, spicebox, espresso bean, chocolate-covered cranberries, and citrus peel. What a wine!

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 14.80%
• 1 hour
• Now – 2032
• 92% Zinfandel4% Barbera4% Petite Sirah
• Serving temperature – 58°
• Cork