My first encounter with one of Andrew Jones’ Field Recordings was back in January of 2016. My buddy Putnam Weekley gave me a taste of the 2014 Old Potrero Zinfandel as an aside during a Ridge tasting at Mudgies Deli & Wine Shop, and I liked it quite well. I had never heard of Andrew Jones before trying that particular wine, but, according to his website, he’s a “vine nursery fieldman planning and planting vineyards for farmers all over California.” His work allows him to find interesting, often “unknown or under-appreciated” sites, and he is sometimes offered small lots of the best fruit from them to make wine under his own labels. (Jones’ secondary labels include Wonderwall, Alloy Wine Works and FICTION.)

Field Recordings is a clever repurposing of the old term that describes “recordings of both natural and human-produced sounds.” Perhaps the most famous field recordings in the US are those made by musicologist/folklorist John Lomax in the 1930s and ‘40s, including legendary tracks performed by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. When you think about it, it doesn’t take much of a stretch to consider wine as a kind of “field recording,” especially wine that expresses a “sense of place” of its vineyard source. In that sense, this Old Potrero Zinfandel is certainly successful.

2015 Field Recordings Zinfandel Aroyo Grande Old Potrero Vineyard, 92% Zinfandel, 5% Mourvedre, 3% Syrah, 14.9% alc., $19.99: Clean and dark in color, and effusively aromatic, all earthy dark “zinberry” and toasty oak. Young, tight and intense, but not unapproachable; full bodied and built for several years in the cellar, but you can give it some air now, say, an hour or so in a decanter, and enjoy it with BBQ, grilled red meats or pasta with a red sauce. The marriage of the deep, dark fruit and toasty oak sets the tone for the wine’s personality, but I’d love to see what happens to this over the next five years and beyond, because it certainly has the stuffing to age and evolve nicely. Find this wine

I found this one, where else, at Ferndale’s Western Market. Putnam is head of the wine department these days, and he has this placed in a stacked display, at a friendly price. I’ll be picking up more this week.

Reporting from Day-twah,

Bastardo

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5. Hangin’ with Luke McCollom of Left Coast Cellars