The Federalist.

I love chili con carne, my own, homemade chili con carne that is.  And I love chili paired with a nice Zinfandel, however, California summer evenings are just too hot to indulge in a big plate of spicy, steaming hot chili (served over rice).  So between the months of May and September/October I simply don't make it, much to the vexation of Vinomaker.  We just recently enjoyed our last, cooler-spring-evening chili paired with a really nice Zinfandel that Thud had sent to me a couple of months back. 
The Federalist, 2010, Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel was everything I like in a well made wine of this particular grape variety; pepper, red currant, plum and raspberry, yum!  Produced by The Terlato Wine Group (a company with an extensive wine portfolio which includes vineyard ownership and management, wine importing/exporting and many international winery collaborations), The Federalist hails from Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County.  The Dry Creek AVA has come to be recognised as perhaps the premier viticultural area in the state for producing Zinfandel.  Zinfandel is considered the unofficial state grape of California.
And besides, I love the label.  Alexander Hamilton was an interesting man; born out of wedlock, he was a patriot, legal scholar, fiscal conservative and a defender of the Constitution of the United States.  All was going well for Hamilton until his career and reputation were derailed by his complicity in an 18th century sex scandal.  And then, to top it all off, he was mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr, a political rival.  Wow, what a life!  Spicy stuff, just like this wine.

Don't judge a bottle by it's cover.

A hastily organised Zinfandel/chili pairing, in Vinoland tonight, was quite a success.  Ten mystery wines - and I say wines as two bottles turned out to be something other than Zin - vied to be top dog, or rather in this case, top animal.
When Vinomaker tastes wines blind, he likes to use combinations of numbers, or animal names, written on plain brown paper bottle bags to identify each wine, instead of the simpler numeric system of numbering the bottles 1, 2, 3, etc.  Vinomaker, and his friend Sky King, believe that tasters experience some sort of number/cognitive bias when faced with a wine numbered 1, versus a wine numbered 10.  I don't think I have ever had a problem with number bias (although I am fond of the number 3), but apparently some people do.  So, when faced with ten bottles of wine - sporting animalia monikers such as pig, sloth, Bluetick Coonhound (a late entry, don't ask), and eel - I displayed no bias towards ugly creatures when I picked toad (very closely followed by lemur) as my favourite wine.
The terrific toad had the good fortune of turning out to be a delightful 2009 Joel Gott Zinfandel from Amador County; extremely varietal like, pepper, raspberries, red currants, and superbly smooth.  The lovely lemur was a 2010 Black Cat Zinfandel from Howell Mountain; redolent with oodles of vanilla, and the bouquet, and matching palate-pleasing taste, of the best cherry pie ever.  Yum!
My least favourite wine was bat (and I'm really quite fond of that particular mammal) which turned out to be a 2009 Ravenswood California Zinfandel ($10); mystery spice, mystery fruit, some oak/vanilla, and hot.
Moral of the story?  None really, except perhaps that a lowly toad may just turn out to be a prince of a wine.