It’s been a while since we offered a California Zinfandel—almost two years, to be frank—but we were eager to break that dry spell after tasting Prima Materia. This one-man operation up in Lake County (north of Napa Valley) crafts a range of wines in criminally small batches, and today’s singular non-vintage Zin maxed out at 15 barrels.
It’s a lively, satisfying, high-altitude Zinfandel with European sensibility, meaning it has little in common with its jammy, excessively oaked California neighbors. Domestic winemakers love to talk about their Old-World inspirations, but Pietro Buttitta, the “one man” in question, is among the few who actually walks the walk.
Buttitta never attempts to copy his favorite European producers; rather, he looks to the history of each variety in its place of origin to discern the most successfully proven approach. Before he started making his way through the West Coast’s fine-dining institutions, Buttitta was a student of history and philosophy. The time he spent studying the classics appears to have made a lasting impact—if you need a wine pairing to go with an obscure ancient Roman recipe, Buttitta’s your guy. Pre-pandemic, he was regularly teaming up with ancient wine historians to host unique wine dinners that explored the locations visited by Odysseus in Homer’s epic poem, or attempted to recreate likely Zinfandel pairings based on wine styles and recipes from 1900. An experienced professional chef whose CV includes Napa Valley’s Michelin-starred Terra, the multi-talented Buttitta is likely to say “thanks, but no thanks” if you offer to help in the kitchen or the cellar—he’d prefer to do it all himself, in addition to providing the entertainment and education. It’s clear that Buttitta has tremendous passion for his interests, and has found the ideal intersection of the subjects that fascinate him.
After burning out on the stress and chaos of kitchen life in 2007, he decided to spend a sabbatical helping out at his family’s Lake County vineyard during harvest, and a year later, he was well on his way to making wine. Buttitta, who believes the under-rated, high-achieving AVA is the next frontier of California wine, now farms a continuous twelve-acre block planted to thirteen different varieties (primarily Italian in origin) at around 1,500 feet in elevation. He works the land without herbicides or pesticides, with ambitions towards dry farming. The soil is dotted with red obsidian from Mt. Konocti, the active volcano that rises above Clear Lake, from the most recent eruption 1,100 years ago.
The fruit for today’s wine comes from two blocks; one planted in 1999 and the other in 2004, which include a mix of DuPratt clone Zinfandel and 03 Primitivo—the Italian version of the variety, brought directly to the United States from Puglia. Despite Lake County’s intense summer heat, Buttitta is still able to preserve plenty of acidity in his ripe Zinfandel fruit. Each block is hand-harvested and spontaneously fermented, separately, in stainless steel and bins (another tactic for maintaining freshness; Buttitta’s wines never see any new oak). He keeps racking to a minimum, preferring to limit the movement of the wine as much as possible.
Half of the fruit for today’s wine comes from the 2018 vintage, the other from 2019—the latter of which underwent partial whole-cluster fermentation. Small amounts of Aglianico and Petite Sirah add depth and structure to the blend, without interfering with Buttitta’s primary goal of preserving the wild, brambly sophistication of Primitivo. The result is an invigorating, high-elevation Zin that had me refilling my glass and asking why more California producers who work with the variety don’t take a few pages out of Italy’s book. The goal was to highlight Lake County’s signature structure and up-front ripeness while incorporating texture, acidity, and savory notes more akin to the nuanced wines of the Old World. The fruit—wild blackberry, black plum, boysenberry, pomegranate, cranberry, and cherry—is certainly juicy, but not at all in a cloying way; rather, it mirrors the delightful freshness of just-squeezed, unripe forest berries. Accents of damp moss, sage, tobacco smoke, freshly turned earth, and black pepper add savory layers of complexity to a Zinfandel that reminds me how good this variety can taste when it’s not masked by aggressive winemaking and excessive ripeness. Soft and supple, yet unexpectedly light on its feet, today’s wine is a pure joy to drink with or without food. Serve it with a slight chill, around 55-60 degrees, in your all-purpose red stems, with just about anything you could think of throwing on the grill—pulled-pork sandwiches would be a great move.