The 2015 Zinfandel Cortina (100% Zinfandel) offers a redder fruited, spice-driven style as well as medium-bodied richness, a light, elegant texture, and beautifully integrated acidity. It drops off slightly on the finish, but shines for its purity, elegance, and charm, and is certainly worth seeking out.

The 2015 Zinfandel Cortina is medium garnet-purple in color with a seducing nose of lilacs, rose hip tea, dusty soil and garrigue over a core of kirsch, baked raspberries and mulberries plus a touch of baking spices. Big, rich, full-bodied and equally seductive in the mouth, it has a firm frame of grainy tannins and great freshness, finishing long and spicy. (LPB)

Both aggressively fruity and fairly complex with accents of dusty soil, graphite and tailored oak sweetness evident in both its well-defined aromas and ripe, but not overbearing flavors, this year's Cortina is a big, beamy wine that is as open and inviting as it is so very rich. As with the best of its siblings, it serves as convincing proof that high ripeness and balance are not mutually exclusive, and, while slightly supple and not built in a way that suggests a need for long-aging, it has fine potential for a few years of positive growth. Drink it now if you choose, but know that it is in no danger of fading away any time soon.