I consider myself pretty well qualified to review almost any Zombie-related product that comes across my desk-like-arrangement of tables, but a Zombie wine? That one puzzled me for a bit.

As you can no doubt imagine, living in Wisconsin I’ve grown to appreciate beer as the first and foremost alcohol in my life. Before moving here I only really used alcohol for cooking.. and the art director *hates* wine. I do mean hates, too.

So I’ve had a couple bottles of ‘Zombie Zin’ around forever.

Yes, ‘Zombie Zin’. It’s a real wine:

Now, I’m clearly a recognized authority on Zombie advertising and media, so I can review the packaging for the wine, which I have to say is pretty good from a Zombie Rights perspective. It’s playful, a bit whimsical, the bottle art is both catchy and yet avoids demonizing the bottle Zombie or focusing exploitatively on any post-mortem injuries/slight decomposition… honestly, way better than I’d expect. No idea about the mohawk, but why can’t a Zombie wear a mohawk? No reason I can think of.

But what about the *wine* inside the bottle?

Well, when in doubt and pressed for time, check Wikipedia, right? Which tells me the following about Zinfandel:

The grapes typically produce a robust red wine, although a semi-sweet rosé (blush-style) wine called White Zinfandel has six times the sales of the red wine in the United States.[2] The grape’s high sugar content can be fermented into levels of alcohol exceeding 15 percent.[3]

The taste of the red wine depends on the ripeness of the grapes from which it is made. Red berry fruits like raspberry predominate in wines from cooler areas,[4] whereas blackberry, anise and pepper notes are more common in wines made in warmer areas[4] and in wines made from the earlier-ripening Primitivo clone.

At first, given that wine = snooty French drink in the ignorant gutter of the popular zeitgeist (ie, my subconscious), I decided to go all out and pair it with some locally made artisanal French-style sausage (from Naumann’s Own Artisan Sausages, btw, if you live in Madison you *really* have to get some of his stuff), a WI made French style cheese with truffles and some bread from the local, authentic, run-by-actual-Frogs French patisserie.

Which led to a meal where neither the art director nor I actually drank that much wine.

Since reviewing wine seems to be completely subjective, my thoughts as I remember them: Zombie Zin is indeed a fruity wine, tastes almost like a wine-ade really. Somewhat astringent, not at all bitter, citrusey almost; feels thin for a wine.

So basically, it tastes like grapes someone let rot in the sun. You know; wine.

Then of course I forgot to upload the pictures and write the review, and actually hit the above Wikipedia article for background, where I learned: Zinfandel isn’t a French wine at all; it’s a California/Italian wine. The name ‘Zinfandel’ refers to the grape when it’s grown in Cali, and it goes by another name in Italy. The wine community found out they were the same plant through DNA tests.

So… I needed to try it again, and I had wine left over; why not cook an Italian dish?

I did that tonight and made a very tasty spaghetti bolognese, using some Zombie Zin as the red wine called for in the recipe:

It worked out *great*, though mostly I think that was due to a lot of high quality ingredients, more Naumann sausage, fancy organic carrots and tomatoes and such.

Given that ‘Zombie Zin’ is a wine that portrays the Differently Animated in a fairly positive light, is, for wine, not completely rank and very useful as a sauce ingredient (the proper home of most wine to my mind), the ZRC is happy to grant it a Zombie Friendly rating.

Now when do I get my Zombie Craft Beer?

Tags: Zombie Products, ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 at 12:25 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.