When people talk about wine regions they'd like to visit, Oregon House just never seems to get mentioned. This is understandable. For one, it's about 20 miles northeast of Marysville, itself so remote and isolated it doesn't draw many visitors, despite its Gold Rush history and relics.

Secondly, Oregon House boasts just a handful of wineries, only one of which ever generated much buzz. That would be Renaissance Vineyard & Winery, an outgrowth of the philosophical and guarded Fellowship of Friends, which bought 1,300 acres of hard rolling land in northern Yuba County in 1971 and began to build a community devoted to spiritual enlightenment and artistic refinement.

One of the group's varied endeavors was the winery and its surrounding 365 acres of vineyards. Over the next couple of decades, the Renaissance label became celebrated for wines of solid structure, clarity, daring and longevity, particularly cabernet sauvignon and riesling, varietals generally not given much hope of withstanding the withering aridity and heat of the Sierra foothills.

During the past decade, however, the fellowship put more effort into its ballet troupe, theater group and other artistic ambitions and less into Renaissance. Most of the vines were pulled out, and production was cut back sharply. Today, it farms just 44 acres of vineyard and makes only around 2,500 cases of wine annually.

Hills that once sprouted vines are now given over to roaming herds of horses, cattle, llamas, ostriches and camels, which is a whole other story.

One of Renaissance's remaining stands of vines is planted to zinfandel, a variety that the fellowship's winemakers never much embraced. Renaissance, in fact, hasn't made a zinfandel under its own brand since 2002. The man who managed Renaissance's vineyards for 30 years, however, always had faith in the zinfandel, and still does.

That would be Grant Ramey, who in 2004, with business partner Eddie Schulten, established his own winery, named Ramey Schulten. David Ramey of Ramey Wine Cellars in Sonoma County, however, didn't care for the resemblance in names. When he let his displeasure be known, Ramey and Schulten in 2006 changed the name of their winery to Grant-Eddie.

Now everyone is happy, especially Grant Ramey, in large part because his wines are being well-received, especially his zinfandel.

His latest interpretation of the varietal, the Grant-Eddie Winery 2009 Sierra Foothills Ramey Mountain Vineyard Zinfandel, hews to the vineyard's reputation for yielding wines rigorous yet accessible. This is a zinfandel with a firm backbone, but it needs that solid support for all the radiant boysenberry fruit hung on it.

I was introduced to the wine at a tasting of more than 100 new and pending releases at the Sacramento grocery store Corti Brothers. When store proprietor Darrell Corti tasted the wine, he remarked, "This is an old-fashioned zinfandel."

Pressed on what that means, he added: "It has reasonable color, it's scented, it's drinkable and it has that pepper smell. Turn a pepper grinder upside down and sniff it. That's what zinfandel should smell like."

I looked at the alcohol content of the wine and waited for him to say more. He didn't. The Grant-Eddie zinfandel has an alcohol content of 13.6 percent, low by today's standards, though not historically.

Corti isn't keen on high-alcohol wines, especially zinfandels, and he's let winemakers know that he isn't much interested in tasting those that exceed 14.5 percent. So he must have also liked that aspect of the Grant-Eddie.

When I subsequently asked Grant Ramey how he packed so much vivid fruit and solid build into a wine with just 13.6 percent alcohol, especially considering the fierce growing conditions in the North Yuba viticultural district, he acknowledged that the alcohol level had been "manipulated." That's winemaker talk for adding water to the juice from grapes that are so ripe they ordinarily would yield a wine fairly high in alcohol. The technique is legal, but not often discussed beyond winemaking circles. "We don't use much water," added Ramey.

He did a couple of other unusual things with the wine. For one, he used only wild yeast to ferment the juice, a somewhat risky technique that nevertheless yields more complex wines, some winemakers are convinced.

He also "cold-soaked" the grapes right after they were crushed. This involved dropping containers of ice into the mass of juice and skins and letting it chill out for four or five days before fermentation. The method helps intensify the color of the wine but avoids harsh tannins, said Ramey.

The result, as Corti said, is an "old-fashioned zinfandel," dense with color, forward with bright berry fruit, laced with peppery spice and solid in build yet manageable on the palate.

Grant-Eddie Winery

2009 Sierra Foothills Ramey Mountain Vineyard Zinfandel

By the numbers: 13.6 percent alcohol, 75 cases, $23

Context: While this is a zinfandel that can be enjoyed on its own, especially if the bottle is briefly chilled, its forthright structure and deep fruit beg for it to be served with a steak of almost any cut or pastas with an earthy red sauce.

Availability: Corti Brothers has been buying much of the winery's zinfandel.

Information: Grant-Eddie Winery doesn't have a tasting room, but it does have a website (www.grantedwines.com), where wines can be ordered online, though not the zinfandel.

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Longtime wine critic and competition judge Mike Dunne continues his relationship with The Bee as a contributing columnist to the Food & Wine section. His wine selections are based solely on tastings, judging at competitions, and visits to wine regions. Check out his blog at www.ayearinwine.com, and reach him at mikedunne@winegigs.com.

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