Sutter Home Winery put California Zinfandel on the map-not red Zinfandel, but White Zinfandel. We applaud having more choices, but now, consumers can get confused between the two, ordering a glass of pink and getting a glass of red instead. To learn how a bold red became a sweet pink, a brief history lesson is in order.

Zinfandel was once thought of as California's own homegrown grape; however, geneticists now know that the popular plantings aren't indigenous, but were likely imported from Italy. The prolific grape found happy homes in California's warm climates.

Regions about the state have plantings of "Zin," most notably Lodi for old vines (at least 35 years old). Napa Valley, Alexander Valley, Paso Robles, Amador County, and Sonoma County all claim famous Zin producers-a testament to the popularity of the wine. Red Zin lovers will cite the "R" producers (Rosenblum, Ravenswood, and Ridge) as go-to sources of premium collections, but there's a long list of wineries that artfully capture the peppery nature of this full-bodied grape.

So, where did the pink wine come in? Quite by accident, Sutter Home "invented" White Zinfandel as the slightly sweet, pale-rose-colored wine we know today. In the 1970s, Sutter Home was in the business of making red Zinfandel wine. As a winemaking practice, they siphoned off part of the pressed grape juice prior to fermentation. This leftover juice would be separately fermented into a blush, dry wine to be sold as a novelty that the staff dubbed White Zinfandel, as it was almost white in the glass.

In the 1975 vintage, however, a fermentation got "stuck," leaving unfermented sugar in the wine. A mistake, the wine was set aside. Soon the winemaker tasted the errant wine, deemed it delicious, and a new style was born to tremendous popularity. Consumers today reap the reward of two options, even if they have to speak up saying "that's red Zinfandel, right?"