Zichichi winery has stumbled into an unusual business model. They only produce two or three wines and you usually can't even buy the bottles in the tasting room. That’s because Zichichi fans so love the wine, that most of their (small) production is pre-sold in the futures market. Fortunately the minimum futures order is six bottles, so it's at least a somewhat affordable. Even though the winery was begun in 2000, they have been producing estate wines for only the last two years. We were fortunate to try a barrel tasting of their 2007 "Old Vine" estate zinfandel. We immediately bought a six bottles future, our first purchase ever in a wine future. This wine promises to be very fruit forward with soft tannins and exceptionally mild spice for a zinfandel. The wine will be bottled in November, 2008 and shipped in March, 2009. We can hardly wait.

Update on Zichichi, April 2009. It’s early April 2009, and we are drooling with anticipation of delivery of our six bottles sometime this month … we hope.

Update on Zichiichi, July 2009.  We received our six bottles and sampled one.  Our futures baby has turned out to be a very big berryiful wine, almost viscous in texture, yet still dry through all the fruit. At 16% alcohol, we expect to consume it as an an aperatif rather than as a table wine.