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Cutter Cascadia Wine 2020 Come On Come On Zinfandel
The confounding beauty of nature
Michael Garofola likes to say he’s “just another somm making wine” — but he is so much more than that. After spending years at iconic restaurants like Beast and Genoa, he developed an unexpected point of view about wine. He wanted to work with unique under-the-radar varietals outside the Willamette Valley and make them in an Old World style.
In fact, the wine he recognizes as his flagship wine is skin contact Riesling – not what anyone would call cool or sexy, but definitely delicious.
Much more than a sommelier and a winemaker, he insists on directly managing every row of grapes that he buys, from pruning to harvest in accordance to the rhythm of the season. Michael is a non-interventionist winemaker – though not dogmatic about the whole “natural wine” movement.
His bottom line? In his own words: “I am an aggregate of all my crushing errors, ennui, small victories, narrow misses and am the metamorphism of said forces. A wine can in its way be this way too if not fussed around with too much or put on an altar. I want it to be fun to drink the wines. I want them to be alive. From my perspective, nothing else really matters, but they aren't mine anymore once they're in your hands.”
Cellar 503 Tasting Notes
Cutter Cascadia Wine, Portland, Oregon
2020 Come On Come On Zinfandel
This is not your typical overblown, jammy California Zinfandel. Grown on a historic vineyard in The Dalles, the grapes here come from vines planted in 1983 which lend a deep character to this wine.
Rather than big blackberry fruit, you’ll get high-toned red fruit like cranberries and raspberries, woodsy spice notes, and a leathery, earthy undertone.
As a non-interventionist winemaker, Michael Garofola made this wine by taking whole clusters of fruit and leaving them in a bin to do the work themselves for 21 days. Once fermentation was complete, the wine spent nine months in old neutral barrels and is finished unfined and unfiltered.
Pair with smoked meats, roasted tomatoes, and fiery curries.
A Cellar 503 selection in March 2022, New World Wines Old World Style Columbia Valley | Zinfandel
