America's Best Zinfandel!
There are 500 wineries in Napa Valley, America's foremost wine-producing region. Charter Oak Winery, in sleepy St. Helena, takes pride that it is the smallest. Oh, and by the way, it's also the most authentic, most traditional winery.
Two guys, and the son of one of them, pick the grapes by hand, turning them into award-winning wine.
Did you hear? The 2007 Charter Oak Monte Rosso Zinfandel was entered into a wine competition in San Francisco last summer: it was chosen Number 1 out of 730 world wines, judged blind by a panel of 24 professional tasters! Now that's "award-winning."
Wine should be clear but not transparent... but wine stories such as this have to be transparent. So let me get this off my chest: I am one of the two winery partners referenced above.
I have been helping my winemaker partner, Rob Fanucci, produce and market our magic elixirs for eight, years. Today, much of the wine-making process is being handed over to Rob's talented son, David, on his way to becoming the third-generation operator of Charter Oak.
Years ago, I was drawn to Rob's wines; His Zinfandels were (and continue to be) elegant, balanced and food-friendly. These are not terms I ever applied to Zinfandel, one of America's brawnier grapes, usually producing hot, alcoholic, monsters, which are anything but food-friendly.
A rabid traditionalist, Rob uses the wine production methods and equipment handed down by his grandfather Guido Ragghianti, who landed in Napa Valley around 1915. Rob even continues to use grandpa Guido's wooden basket to press out the fermented juice from the skins and pits.
This may explain why Charter Oak Zinfandel has such supple texture. In large commercial wineries, where they use industrial presses, they'll press 190 gallons of wine out of a ton of Zinfandel grapes. At Charter Oak, using Guido's old-world basket press, we're lucky to get 130 gallons from the same ton of grapes. In other words, commercial wineries get nearly 50% more juice from the same ton of fruit, which means their resultant wine is a whole lot "thinner" than ours.
To make our award-winning Zinfandel, we also start with really special fruit; Monte Rosso is one of America's oldest vineyards, now pushing 130-years-old. A handful of wineries are still able to access fruit from this Sonoma vineyard, now owned by Gallo, but early Italian settlers here, like Guido, had a past-the-grave relationship with the original owners, themselves Italian. So Rob still has access to Monte Rosso fruit. And as old vines produce inherently bigger, spicier, chewier wines, we have another leg up over many Zinfandel producers.
Another reason to plan a visit to Charter Oak (by appointment only): Visual charm awaits you.
Layla Fanucci, Rob's wife, is a highly accomplished artist. In the last three years, she has had major solo exhibitions in New York and Marrakech, Morocco. The winery walls are covered with her art; you can talk about pairing wine and food all you like -- but nothing goes better with Charter Oak Zinfandel than a large serving of Layla's art... and you can get your fill of both as you wander the winery ground floor, viewing Layla's large paintings as you sip wine-country's best Zinfandel.
Herself a traditionalist, Layla disdained supermarket eggs, so she built a large chicken coop at the winery, which is now the home of 13 wildly colorful chickens. They produce, tasty organic eggs and Layla will take you out to the coop to introduce you to each of her hens.
Rob and I enjoy the eggs year-round but at bottling time, we harness these organic eggs -- for their egg whites -- to "fine" the wine (a traditional wine-making practice to remove larger particles of skin or pits, which beats adding chemicals, the commercial method to "fine" wine).
Give us a call; we'd love to introduce you to Layla's art and chickens, and what we consider is America's best-tasting Zinfandel.
Charter Oak Winery, 831 Charter Oak Ave. St. Helena, CA. 94574
707-963-2298
Visits by appointment only please.
Photography by Layla Fanucci
Jim White
Jim White lives in Napa Valley, California, where he makes wine, and writes about food and wine for his own site napaman.com. Jim is also a co-founder and active partner in one of North America’s most successful commercial bakeries, FGF Brands, in Toronto, Ontario. Over a span of 30 years, as one of North America’s leading food and beverage product developers, Jim successfully brought to market more than 10,000 products. Jim attributes his product development success to the journalistic approach he brings to each food assignment; he has an innate curiosity to know how things work, or why they taste the way they do. It makes sense that Jim propels his food career with journalistic principles as he has had a parallel career in journalism for all the years he created food products. In the 1970s, Jim was a foreign correspondent in Africa, covering wars and famines, writing for the largest newspapers in North America, for UPI and the Associated Press. In the 1980s, Jim became food editor and restaurant critic of The Toronto Star, one of the largest newspapers in North America. Although twice named “Best Food Writer in North America,” Jim has also always been passionate about the visual element; he is an accomplished photographer, and over the years has sold images to Life, Time and Newsweek magazines.