The grapes are a dusty shade of pale gray, producing the most sugary fruit of any wine grape species. In particular, the variation known as 'White Zinfandel', a blush rosé , has the greatest popularity in the United States. If the average American has only ever tasted wine once, chances are it was White Zinfandel.

Zinfandel has a curious history tangled with United States history, having emerged on American shores sometime in the 1820s. It was first cultivated as a table grape and consumed for its fruit and used for making raisins. During the years of United States Alcohol Prohibition laws, it was almost stamped out, but survived until Prohibition was repealed, and then began its ascent into wide popularity starting from California.

Zinfandel is perhaps the New World wine with the most dodgy reputation, damaged in part by White Zinfandel, which in practice is a young wine that is bottled only half-fermented so that it resembles more of a sweet grape juice than a proper wine. In Italy, the wine is largely regarded as a 'rip-off' of Primitivo, and Italian wine-makers have fought back by producing Primitivo wine to export to the United States with the label bearing the name 'Zinfandel'. It has only been in the past two decades that the wine has begun to be taken seriously, once the red Zinfandel variation was again allowed to flourish.

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