If you are visiting us for the first time, Welcome! The Wine Spies feature one exceptional wine each day – and we only bring you wines that we ourselves seek out and love. Always, the wines are great. Sometimes even better than that, as is the case with today’s wine from Hawley Winery.

Mission Codename: My Cousin Zinny

Operative: Agent Red

Objective: Rove the hills and valleys of Sonoma County, recover an outstanding Zinfandel for our Operatives

Mission Status: Accomplished!

Current Winery: Hawley Winery

Wine Subject: 2006 Ponzo Vineyard Zinfandel

Winemaker: John Hawley

Backgrounder: Winemaker John Hawley has been making wine for some of the most prestigious wine brands in industry. In 1996 he built his own winery in the hills above the fabled Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County. Today, John and his two sons handcraft small lots of exceptional wines that express the unique character of their region.

Wine Spies Tasting Profile:

Look – Deep dark, almost blood red, but clear with concentrated color right up to the edges of the wine and the slowest-moving and tightest leg-spacing we have ever seen on a Zinfandel. Very unique

Smell – Big white pepper with fruits of jammy raspberry, strawberry, and candy apple. Also present just beneath the surface are earthen aromas of forest floor and cedar bark

Feel – Slick across the lips and then springy and round on the tongue with medium mid-palate tannins

Taste – Deeply concentrated with intense sweet flavors of mixed berry, pepper, vanilla custard and baking spices

Finish – Sweet and extremely long with a warm dryness that heats the soul and invites more sipping!

Conclusion – This is a gigantic Zinfandel with over-the-top flavors and a rush of aromas that tell you that this wine is not messing around. Let it enjoy some time in the air, and a softness creeps in that tones the wine down, softening it up a little without making it lose its exciting and unique character. With its bold and concentrated flavors, this wine is a big-zin lover’s dream come true.

Mission Report:

Live mission update : : Voice transcription stream capture : :

Lab tests of our proprietary handheld W.I.N.E. (Wine Internet Nexus Engine) Portable have been successful and I was given the honor of taking the device into the field for real-world testing.

The Top Secret W.I.N.E. Portable is a simple device; It uses a combination of sophisticated mass spectrometer sensors, GPS and Wine AI to scope out exceptional wines. Connected, real-time, to our W.I.N.E. mainframe at Central Command (Agent White really needs to stop calling it H.Q.), the new Portable promises to be an invaluable tool.

I’m here in Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Valley, where some of the best Zinfandels on record have come from. So far, this new device seems to be operating to spec. GPS systems check out, as do the GPS/Mainframe data-sharing. Each time I pass a vineyard or winery, the system accurately displays all publicly available data – along with our own, deeper, private intel.

I am now standing on a hillside that overlooks this gorgeous valley and am switching on the Mass Spec.

(audible click)

The built-in Mass Spec will take readings from the air and will literally sniff out our target wine. The data it collects will be collated and cross-compared against private and public records. In 60 seconds or less, it should point me toward the object of today’s desire, the perfect Zinfandel!

(audible beeps ensue)

Wait a minute. This can’t be right. According to these readings, the wine that was found is fraught with contradictions.

First, the quality rating is simply too high. Then there are genetic markers that suggest ‘this-century vines’. This last fact, when considered on its own is not odd, but the reading that says that the wine was made using 120 year-old winemaking techniques – which pre-date the grapes – and this cannot be correct.

I had high hopes for this device but I guess that its back to the lab with it.

Just for fun, let’s follow the device’s direction and see what wine – if any – it leads me to. Switching off recording.

[time elapsed : 18 minutes]

I am at the gate of the Hawley Family winery. According to the handheld, John Hawley and his sons make incredible wine. Bill himself has made wines in the area for more than a quarter century, for the likes of Clos Du Bois and Kendall-Jackson where he was founding winemaker and chief winemaker respectively. I’m going in for a closer look.

[elapsed time : 36 minutes]

The handheld works!

As I drove closer to the winery, the reason for the last-century reading was resolved: There, on the crushpad, antique manual basket press. Remarkable.

I got out of the car and was greeted by Austin, one of John’s 2 sons that work here at the winery. I revealed my identity and asked him if he would show me the Zinfandel I had been led to find. After tasting the wine I knew without a doubt that the device works!

This Ponzo Vineyard Zinfandel is a total masterpiece. We sampled just-opened bottles and bottles that had had a full day of airing opened-then-sealed bottles. Both examples were great, but the opened one was fantastic.

For proof that the W.I.N.E. Handheld works, pick up a few bottles of this great wine.

Wine Spies Vineyard Check:

The location of the Hawley Winery can be seen in this satellite photo.