Klinker Brick Winery Old Vine Zinfandel California Red Wine

The product name includes the words "Old Vine," but stops there. Our grape research says vine age is one of the things that can change how a Zinfandel turns out, along with when the fruit is picked and how ripe it gets; the producer's own vineyard page now supplies a number, detailed below.

Behind the name is a family record. Klinker Brick Winery says Steve and Lori Felten started it in 2000 in Lodi, California, and that the Felten family had grown grapes in Lodi for close to a hundred years before opening a winery of their own. So grape-growing in that family runs back generations, even if this bottle's own vine age is not spelled out.

Zinfandel itself, our grape research notes, is a red grape with a long California history, and it can be made as a red wine, as the pink wine sold as White Zinfandel, or as part of a blend. Regional authorities describe ripe berry and plum fruit with spice, and a fuller body when the grapes reach higher ripeness. That is the grape in general, not a note taken from this bottle.

We do not have a shopper rating for this wine. The price ranged from $18.99 to $30.99 across the eight stores we checked in September 2026. The producer's own account is the family's long record of growing grapes in Lodi.

Klinker Brick's own vineyard page puts a number behind the “Old Vine” name: the Felten family farms 15 to 24 blocks of Old Vine Zinfandel across the Mokelumne River and Clements Hills appellations of Lodi, with vines ranging from 40 to 122 years old in deep sandy loam soil. Those old, dry-farmed vines are deliberately kept to low yields, 2 to 3.5 tons per acre and as little as a quarter ton in the oldest blocks, which the producer says concentrates the fruit into smaller, more intense berries. The producer also lists Wine Enthusiast scores for this flagship Old Vine Zinfandel bottling across several recent vintages, 94 points for 2021, 92 for 2018, 90 for 2020, distinct from Klinker Brick's separate single-vineyard Marisa bottling. Joseph Smith has been the winery's winemaker since 2008, with Barry Gnekow, a UC Davis graduate with more than 35 years in the trade, serving as winemaking consultant since the winery's founding.

Our call: the producer backs up the “Old Vine” name on the label with real numbers, vines the winery says run 40 to 122 years old, deliberately farmed to a fraction of a typical yield, plus a run of Wine Enthusiast scores in the low-to-mid 90s for this same bottling across recent vintages. Pass if you want a shopper rating to match that producer account; none has reached our record yet, so the case for buying rests on Klinker Brick's own word and outside critics rather than the crowd.

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