Cline Ancient Vines Zinfandel California Red Wine

Zinfandel is the name to know here, and it is a grape with a long run in California: guides note it there across generations, turning up as a red, as the pink style sold as White Zinfandel, and as part of a blend. Those same guides describe ripe berry and plum with a note of spice, and a fuller body when the fruit is picked riper, while adding that vine age, harvest timing, and alcohol can shift the result quite a lot. As for the words Ancient Vines, that is the wine's name, not a number we can stand behind. We do not have a shopper rating for this bottle, and the lowest we saw was $15.99 in our September 2026 checks.

The winery behind it has a clear start of its own: Cline Family Cellars says Fred and Nancy Cline founded it in Oakley, California, in 1982. If you shop the red aisle by grape, Zinfandel is the one thing here you can count on. The top price we saw was $19.99, in our September 2026 checks.

Our own checks could not verify an exact vine age behind the Ancient Vines name, but Cline's product page for the 2022 vintage does: the producer describes some of the vines as "well over 100 years old," growing dry-farmed in sandy delta soils along the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers in Contra Costa County, having persisted through phylloxera and Prohibition. The same page lists the finished wine at 14.5 percent alcohol with 16 months in French oak before bottling.

Cline's page also lists critic scores it has collected for this bottling: 95 points from Vinepair, 93 from Wine Enthusiast, 91 from Tasting Panel and 90 from Wine Spectator. The producer's own tasting note calls out "the varietal strawberry character that Zinfandel is known for," balanced and fresh with a touch of raspberry and vanilla, and Cline says the wine drinks well now but will hold for five to seven years, pairing it with slow-cooked barbecue pork or chicken mole.

Our call: a solid pick if Cline's own record is enough for you; the producer backs the Ancient Vines name with dry-farmed, century-old Contra Costa County fruit and lists four critic scores ranging from 90 to 95 for this bottling. Pass if a shopper record matters more than a critic's; no rating has reached ours yet, so the producer's and the critics' word is what you would be buying on.

The Grocery Store Wine Desk · written Sep 16, 2026 from our research file for this wine. Numbers reflect our latest checks.