MARTINELLI, JACKASS HILL ZINFANDEL 1994

Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, California, USA

- Stephen Brook

A legend because…

The Martinelli family have been grape growers in Sonoma since the late 1880s. It remains their primary business to this day, with most of the fruit contracted to other wineries. The family stopped producing their own wines after 1949, but the winery reopened in the late 1980s under winemaker Daniel Moore. Helen Turley came on board in 1992 as consultant winemaker; she only left in 2010. Turley was a name to conjure with, admired by Robert Parker and other influential wine writers. Sonoma Zinfandel was typically a big, ripe wine with more heft than finesse. European palates often found it Porty and fatiguing, but Americans – the main buyers of these wines – adored it, their predilection boosted by wine critics’ rave reviews.

Looking back