Mazzocco Sonoma - Music Pages For Matthew Cook, Artist

Located on Lytton Springs Road in the northern part of the Dry Creek Valley, Mazzocco makes a wide variety of single vineyard Zinfandels. The first time we stopped here they were pouring all 100% zins – no blends. We promptly joined their wine club and have been enjoying their Zinfandel for a few years now.

This was an early spring trip. Nothing much growing yet.

They do make a Chardonnay. Last time through we tried one with grapes from Stuhlmuller Vineyards in Chalk Hill. Clean, easy fruit with an alcohol tingle at the end.

What we really come for are the Zinfandels.

The Tasting Room has a lineup of the single vineyard wines. There are quite a lot of them.

Having tried many of them, we definitely have our favorites. Pony, Pony reserve, Smith Orchard Reserve along with the Fog are our favorite Mazzocco Zinfandels so far.

2104 Fog – Has some of the typical Mazzocco naugahyde nose – like seat covers on a ’56 Bel Aire. Minerals up front in the mouth that remind us of the minerals in Kona Coffee – the flavor you would get from licking Pahoehoe. A really nice bold fruit, plum, cherry, easy on the tannins.

2014 Verano – Spicy nose with plastic – the aforementioned naugahyde. Seems young and impetuous. Big juicy fruit – some apricot even – with a dry finish.

2104 Warm Springs Ranch – This is a warm wine with tannic fruit, caramel notes. Because of the tannins this doesn’t make our top picks list. We do have a Warm Springs Reserve in the cellar to try one of these days.

2104 West Dry Creek – This is nice, soft, fruit wine with cherry and plum. Very approachable.

Pony, Pony reserve, Smith Orchard Reserve along with the Fog are our favorite Mazzocco Zinfandels so far.

We really like Mazzocco wines and we enjoy the Wilson Family of Artisan Wineries which we joined when we joined the Mazzocco wine club. There are nine wineries spread out from Hopland in Mendocino County, the Alexander Valley, through Dry Creek and Russian River to Sonoma Valley. We have visited them all over the last couple years.

Antoine Favero, the winemaker at Mazzocco is also the winemaker at Jaxon Keys, Soda Rock, and some of De Lorimer.