Stama Winery unveils new tasting room and exciting plans for Lodi’s future

Phase 1 of Stama Winery’s Mediterranean inspired winery, where a temporary tasting room has just opened

Very quietly, over the recent ZinFest weekend, Stama Winery unveiled a spanking new, if low key, tasting room – open 7 days a week, from 11 AM – centrally located at the site of their new winery facility on Davis Road, just south of Turner Road on Lodi's west side. For Konstantino "Gus" Kapiniaris – and his son Frank Kapiniaris, who manages Stama Winery while working a regular job in the Bay Area – the ongoing construction of the first two of three planned Mediterranean country style structures (stark white walls, 12-ft. high arched oak doors, and classically Romanesque red-barrel..

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Photos of Lodi Wine Nation at another fun, tranquil ZinFest

Woman power: Charles Communications Associates’ Alexandra Fondren (who handles LoCA’s national P.R.) at Wine School.

Blame it all on their roots, they showed up in boots, and all kinds of hats and wine-country-chic apparel, including threads studded with corks from their favorite bottlings of Lodi wine! They also came from places as far as Canada (whole contingents from both Vancouver and Toronto), Iowa or Florida, and as near as Sacramento, San Francisco, Reno, Carlsbad or L.A. According Macchia Wines owner/winemaker Tim Holdener, quoted in the local paper (Lodi News-Sentinel), the 2015 Lodi ZinFest Wine Festival "was very exciting… the crowd really got into it this year." Why not? This year's ZinFest weather was perfect...

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Beautiful thing – the refreshing purity of Onesta Wines

Onesta Wines

Lodi AVA grown wines of Onesta Wines

The Lodi AVA grown wines of Onesta Wines winemaker/owner Jillian Johnson DeLeon are distinguished by two closely related things:

• Abiding respect for her grape sources – that is, she crafts wines so that you can taste the fruit and distinctive qualities of the vineyard, rather than a personal style or attempt to achieve a high "score."
• A strong feel for the lighter, crisper, sleeker, less oak influenced style to which more and more consumers are gravitating (notwithstanding wine critics who still give the highest scores to bigger, more intense and/or oakier wines). Case in point, Johnson DeLeon's...

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Lodi wines for tasting, purchase and by-the-glass at ZinFest Festival

2015 ZinFest Festival

Are you ready for Lodi's 2015 ZinFest Festival, happening this coming Saturday, May 16? Starting at 12 Noon in the gorgeous Lodi Lake Park, ZinFest wine lovers will be able to not only taste over 200 Lodi grown wines made by the region's best producers, they will be able to purchase most of these wines at the Zinfandel Wine Shoppe, conveniently located at the entrance of the festival grounds...

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The 2012 ZinFest Commemorative Zinfandel is an essence of Lodi

2012 ZinFest Commemorative Zinfandel

Each year the Lodi ZinFest produces about a 1,000 bottles of a Commemorative Lodi grown Zinfandel under a colorful Belle Époque inspired art label by our official ZinFest artist, Vince McIndoe, always featuring the same mysterious "red headed girl." This year's special bottling was produced by Michael McCay, whose McCay Cellars Zinfandels, in recent years, have received great critical acclaim for their pure, expressive renderings of Lodi grown fruit. In his book The New California Wine, for instance, Jon Bonné (San Francisco Chronicle's former Wine Editor) described McCay's Zinfandels as such: If big and brawny is Lodi's hallmark, McCay sprinted..

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