Welcome to the Wine Spies Intrigue Awards for 2016! Each year we recognize our most popular and most sought-after wines from the previous year - while giving our Operatives one final chance to secure some of the winning wines for themselves.

We may never show this wine again, so grab yours while you still can.

We are thrilled today to offer you the food-fantastic, beautifully balanced, oh so delicious Grgich Hills Estate 2012 Napa Valley Estate Grown Zinfandel, our 2016 Wine Spies Intrigue Award winner for Top Zinfandel.

The previous vintage of this wine was our 2015 Wine Spies Wine Intrigue Awards winner for most-requested wine of 2015. Guess what? This wine is even better!

2012 has really shaped up to be one of the best years on record for Napa Valley and Sonoma County wines. The 2012 vintage was characterized as “Classic” and “Perfect”, with ideal spring bud break, steady flowering, and brilliant fruit-set… all adding up to optimal ripeness. 2012 wines are ripe, filled with fruit and bursting with bold aromatics.

Today’s 2012 Grgich Zin is a wine that the winery itself is very proud of. This delicious wine is dark and full on the nose, with balanced aromas of roasted cherry, braised plum, blackberry bramble, baked apple, subtle cured meat, spice box and a hint of cracked peppercorn.

On the palate, rich and serious, with layer upon layer of flavor, including black cherry preserve, grilled plum, blackberry, dried fall leaves, baked red apple, stewed plum, baking spice and cracked peppercorn.

This Zin is one of the most food-friendly you’ll find from this heralded winery. We offer it to you with our boldest recommendation.

Cheers to you!

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Here’s what the wine press has to say:

91 points - Connoisseurs Guide to California Wines - “Bright, buoyant, intensely fruity and absolutely unwavering in its keen varietal focus, this impressively extracted effort is long on substance and stuffing, yet is very well-structured for the ample and very ripe wine that it is.

It is supple to start and keeps heat nicely in check while showing a good bit of grippy, young back-palate tannins and, if not inordinately rough at the finish, it is a Zinfandel that fully deserves age. It is so deep in fruit that it is certain to tempt hasty drinking, but this is serious wine to cellar away for another three to five years.

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90 points - Virginie Boone, Wine Enthusiast - “This is an exuberantly fruity, spicy and robust wine, speckled with 2% Petite Sirah. Dark and full of red berry flavor, the palate is dusted in brown sugar and black pepper. Ripe and concentrated, it drinks smooth and elegant despite its serious power.”