For The Philadelphia Inquirer, wine writer Marnie Old traces the origin of the modern red blend category back to Marietta Cellars, the Sonoma winery that launched Old Vine Red in 1982, well before “field blend” reds became a California staple.
Old explains that quality-focused winemakers in the ’80s and ’90s were initially wary of non-varietal wines, worried they’d be mistaken for cheap, generic plonk. Marietta broke from that thinking, choosing to sell Old Vine Red by lot number rather than a single vintage, prioritizing price-to-quality ratio over prestige labeling. The wine draws on the old, pre-Prohibition field-blend vineyards of Sonoma and Mendocino counties, where Zinfandel dominates alongside grapes like Syrah and Barbera, all vinified in a fully dry, European-influenced style that blends younger and cask-aged wine.
Old calls the resulting wine “quite a mouthful,” balancing youthful, jammy blueberry pie flavors against more mature notes of dried cherries, fig jam, and pipe tobacco, now sold under the winery’s Old Vine Ranch line.
Check out the full review HERE.
