Seven Oxen Estate Paso Robles Zinfandel 2018

Seven Oxen Estate Paso Robles Zinfandel 2018

Founding Vigneron, Bastien Leduc, hails from Castelnau-de-Montmiral in the southwest of France, where he grew up helping his father on his family’s pioneering organic vineyard. Bastien believes grape-growing is the most important part of the winemaking process, and meticulously oversees the farming of the Seven Oxen estate and the production of Seven Oxen wines from their very inception on the vine to their bottling.

The 130-acre Seven Oxen estate is located on Kiler Canyon Road in Paso Robles’ coveted westside, straddling the Templeton Gap and Willow Creek sub AVAs. The limestone-rich property includes 26 acres of head-trained vines. The vineyard is located 30 miles from the Pacific Ocean, where southwest-facing slopes are cooled in the evenings by coastal breezes, which allow the vines to maintain balanced levels of acidity despite extreme summer heat.

Paso Robles is a large winegrowing area at the southern end of California’s Central Coast region. At 666,500 acres (270,000ha) the official Paso Robles AVA is among California’s very largest; it effectively covers the northern half of San Luis Obispo County.

Today, wine from Paso Robles wines are typified by rich, ripe reds based on warm-climate varieties such as Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and the Rhone Valley trio Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre. The majority are made from these warm-climate varieties but Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are also found, mostly in the very coolest vineyards of the region.

Zinfandel (or “Zin”, as it is affectionately known in the United States) is a dark-skinned red wine grape variety widely cultivated in California. It arrived in the Americas from Europe in the early years of the 19th Century, and was an immediate success in both Napa and Sonoma counties, which remain its strongholds today.