Where Did the Idea Come From?

Many years ago, when I began to recognize what an improvement a few years of ageing has for the enjoyability of big reds, I started to buy wines for the explicit purpose of storing them for drinking a few years later. But this always proved to be problematic. There wasn’t enough room in my closet, my flats were too warm and temperatures fluctuate too much even in the coolest corner of any apartment. Several years ago I talked a winemaker friend into letting me store my wines in one of his unused cellars. While that solved the temperature problems, it was problematic to drive out to the wine country whenever I wanted a particular bottle, the humidity killed the labels on the bottles, and the resident spiders in his cellar were downright frightening! All along I kept thinking to myself “why doesn’t anyone have a wine vault downtown?” Then came a fateful day in January 2014 when my boss arrived from Frankfurt with the news that our company was closing its Budapest office. I suppose there is nothing like becoming suddenly unemployed to motivate you to realize your dreams!

As for the name Zinfandel, it was an easy choice. I grew up in Northern California, and was raised on the bold, complex reds of the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. When I met my wife, I discovered the perfect and most enthusiastic partner for my wine journey. Two things quickly became clear as we refined and defined our tastes: our preferences match each other amazingly, and if there is ever a selection of wines to choose from, without question, the Zinfandel is the first bottle we’ll both reach for. Thus there was never any doubt that if I did something related to wine it would have to be named after our favorite Californian varietal.