FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Julie Ann Kodmur
707/963-9632 or corking@julieannkodmur.com

2000 ZAP BOARD ANNOUNCED
Two year terms for industry VIPs

January 2000, Rough & Ready CA---At Zinfandel Advocates & Producer's annual meeting on January 4, results of the vote for Board of Directors positions and officers were announced by Rebecca Robinson, Executive Director, Zinfandel Advocates & Producers.

NEW PRESIDENT
Katie Quinn, the new President, is the Winemaker and Co-Owner of Amador Foothill Winery in the Sierra Nevada foothills. After trying her hand as a Park Ranger at Yosemite and as an analytical chemist, she earned a master's degree in enology at UC Davis and began making wine in Sonoma County before moving to Amador County. She and her husband Ben Zeitman are pioneers in bottling vineyard-designated Zinfandels; the winery was founded in 1980 and produces about 7,000 cases annually.

VICE PRESIDENT
Robert Biale, the owner of Robert Biale Winery in Napa, is the new Vice President of the ZAP Board. Biale made the 1996 and and 1997 ZAP Blend wines and the 1998 Zinfandel Heritage Vineyard wine. Robert Biale Winery was founded in 1991 and produces 4,000 cases of wine a year; the winery specializes in vineyard-designated old-vine Zinfandels.

TREASURER
Re-elected as Treasurer, Richard Flores is an Advocate member who brings his expertise in senior management at non-profit organizations, including United Way and UniTEQ, a donor services organization. His first association of Zinfandel goes back to childhood, when he helped make wine at home, helping crush grapes in the family's barn. Richard administers the Zinfandel Heritage Vineyard's Adopt-A-Vine Program and he writes and distributes ZAP-O-GRAMs on the internet.

SECRETARY
The new ZAP Board Secretary is Jeff Ivy from Mendocino. Jeff grew up in Austin, Texas and intended to become a diplomat; along the way he decided to use his degree in government and history in the wine business. Remembering a time when he fell into a vat of fermenting grapes at 2:30 a.m., he chuckles, "where else can you get paid to get dirty and stay dirty?!"

BUSY 2000
Robinson announced a busy calendar beginning with the 9th Annual ZAP Zinfandel Festival January 27-29 in San Francisco. Two hundred and eighteen wineries will pour at least two Zinfandels each during the Annual Tasting on the 29th, for which some tickets will be available at the door (or by phone from 415/441-3687 until January 27. Over fifty winery-members will go on the road, staging educational tastings in Minneapolis (April 24), Chicago (April 26), Cincinnatti (April 27) and Cleveland (April 29). A visit to Southern California will be scheduled later this year. For the seventh year, ZAP will organize the popular JazZin event in Folsom on June 3. ZAP also organizes Zinfandel Days in each of California's winegrowing regions, where Zinfandel producing wineries in a specific growing region open their doors for specialized tastings and entertainment for members of ZAP on specific weekends: El Dorado (April 28-30), Northern Sonoma (July 7-9), Southern Sonoma (August 11-13), Napa (June 23-25), Mendocino and Lake (July 14-16), Oregon (May 13), Amador (May 19-21), Greater Bay Area (July 28-30), Lodi (August 4-6), Calaveras and Tuolomne (June 9-11), Southern California (June 16-18), Russian River Valley (August 25-27). A date for the Central Coast area has not yet been set.

The 10th Annual Zinfandel Advocates & Producers' Festival will take place in San Francisco on January 25-27, 2001.

Tickets and information about these events are available from the ZAP office.

BOARD MEMBERS
Elected this year to the Board are Doug Beckett (Peachy Canyon Winery, representing the Central Coast), Robert Biale (Robert Biale Winery, Napa), Gary Martin (Pedroncelli, Northern Sonoma), Phyllis Zouzounis (Mazzocco & Deux Amis, Northern Sonoma), Joel Peterson (Ravenswood Winery, Southern Sonoma), Kent Rosenblum (Rosenblum Cellars, Greater Bay Area) and Justin Boeger (Boeger Winery, Sierra Foothills).

Returning Board members who are completing their second term are Erin Cline (Cline Cellars, at large), Richard Flores (at large, an Advocate member), Walt Hampe (Sutter Home Winery, Napa), Jeff Ivy (Mendocino/Lake), Frank Ortega (at large, an Advocate), Katie Quinn (Amador Foothills Winery, Sierra Foothills) and Grady Wann (Quivira, Northern Sonoma). Wann will be making the 1998 ZAP Blend wine.

INTERACTIVE ZINFANDEL!
ZAP also announced its new web site, www.zinfandel.org, which will be up by the end of January, 2000. The site incorporates not only information about the busy calendar, but extensive background materials on Zinfandel and its unique role as "America's heritage grape," links to members' web sites and an interactive presentation of the Zinfandel Aroma Wheel. The site was designed by Roundhouse LLC of Sausalito, California.

A RESOLUTION ON THE FLOOR OF CONGRESS
One of the priorities for ZAP's leadership is working towards the passage of Senate Resolution 132, introduced by California's Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer on July 1, 1999. The Resolution would commemorate the Zinfandel grape by establishing January 23-29, 2001 as Zinfandel Appreciation Week. The full text of the Resolution and how you can help work towards its passage are available at ZAP's website, www.zinfandel.org.

ALL YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ZINFANDEL…..
ZAP has just published the first Zinfandel Resource Guide, a comprehensive 17-page illustrated booklet which reviews Zinfandel's uniqueness and history in a lively question-and-answer format; the Guide includes lists of resources for those interested in learning more about the varietal as well. The Guide can be ordered from the ZAP office for $25.00 a copy (proceeds benefit the Heritage Vineyard); ZAP members receive a discount on this purchase. "The Resource Guide is terrifically useful for getting an understanding of the history of Zinfandel," explains Rebecca Robinson. "We wanted to present lots of information in a friendly format so that a reader can dip in and out finding whatever is of greatest interest," she adds.

THE ORGANIZATION
ZAP is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to recognizing the uniqueness of the Zinfandel grape. Founded in 1991, it has grown to include 188 winery members and 5,000 consumer "Advocates," all of whom receive a quarterly newsletter full of Zin-related information as well as events tailored to Advocates. The organization supports research related to Zinfandel; two ongoing projects are UC Davis Prof. Carole Meredith's documenting of Zinfandel DNA in the Heritage Vineyard and UC Davis Prof. James Wolpert's effort to preserve the heritage of Zinfandel by literally collecting century-old vines from across California in the Heritage Vineyard. Prof. Wolpert administers the Heritage Vineyard, which lies within UC Davis' research vineyards in Oakville in the Napa Valley. Wolpert conducts Zinfandel "safaris" throughout California's growing regions to find these "heritage" vines. Since 1998 ZAP has presented Prof. Wolpert with more than $50,000 to further the work in the Heritage Vineyard.