Beating the October rain at Lodi's Silvaspoons Vineyards

2016 Silvaspoons Vineyards Alvarelhão harvest under overcast October skies

At 7:00 this morning (Thursday, October 13, 2016), the rising sun’s light barely visible through gray overcast skies, Ron Silva spoke about the frantic picking of the last of his Silvaspoons Vineyards grapes before a projected rain storm.

“Rain is expected as early as tonight,” says Silva. “We have had two crews out in our Mingo Rd. vineyard since 3:00 AM, hand-picking in the dark with headlamps and overhead lights. We plan to work the rest of the morning to get in as much as we possibly can...”

Oct 13, 2016 at 4:00 PM Permalink

Winemaker John Giannini brings bold new direction to Van Ruiten Family Vineyards

Van Ruiten Family winemaker John Giannini at home in his lab

In November of last year (2015), Van Ruiten Family Vineyards – significant as one of the Lodi Viticultural Area’s largest, most established multi-generational and family-owned grower/wineries – took the bold step of bringing in John Giannini as their winemaker. This was a real coup for Lodi, as Mr. Giannini had previously distinguished himself as the oenology instructor at California State University Fresno (a post he held for over 10 years), as well as winemaker for the Fresno State Winery.

These past two months Mr. Giannini has been experiencing his first-ever harvest in Lodi. We caught up with him in his lab last week Tuesday (October 4, 2017), as he was measuring the titratable acidity of fermenting wines...

Oct 10, 2016 at 6:00 AM Permalink

Round-up of top Barbara bottlings from Lodi's oldest (and younger) plantings

In 2016, tiny, palm sized Barbera clusters in Lodi's 44-year-old Noma Vineyard

In 1972, according to St. Amant Winery owner/winemaker Stuart Spencer, “E. & J. Gallo approached several Lodi growers and asked them to plant Barbera.” The understanding was that these grapes were needed as key components for the winery’s most famous red wine, called Hearty Burgundy.

When E. & J. Gallo introduced its proprietary Hearty Burgundy in 1964, it quickly became America’s best selling “jug” red. In a landmark November 1972 Time Magazine cover story on the growing popularity of American wine, Los Angeles Times wine critic, Robert Lawrence Balzer was quoted to say, "Gallo Hearty Burgundy is the best wine value in the country today”... period...

Oct 5, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

2016 Lodi Zinfandels, says Macchia's Tim Holdener, are showing phenomenal balance

Macchia winemaker/owner Tim Holdener with 2016 Zinfandel barrel samples

It’s October 3, 2016, and Lodi winegrowers are talking about wrapping up the vintage within the next two weeks, as soon as it is humanly possible to bring in the rest of the Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah, Carignan, Barbera and other later-ripening black skinned grapes lingering in the fields.

Chalk it up to the recent spate of mild winters pushing bud break and flowering earlier in the season, or to weather events tantamount to global warming, whatever your political beliefs may be. Earlier vintages have been happening up and down the entire West Coast, not just in Lodi.

A more pertinent question might be, how does this bode for quality? If you ask Tim Holdener, the winemaker/owner of Lodi’s Macchia Wines, things are looking “fantastic,” particularly for Zinfandel, Lodi's pièce de résistance.

Oct 3, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

Mourvèdre (in gentle Lodi) is a red wine that compels, not panders

First, the skinny: this coming Friday/Saturday/Sunday (September 30-October 2, 2016), Bokisch Vineyards is offering a golden opportunity at their tasting room in Lodi’s Clements Hills area. Visitors will be able to taste 4 vintages of their Bokisch Vineyards Belle Colline Vineyard Monastrell; 2007 being the oldest, and 2014 the latest.

What’s the big deal? According to the winery:

Monastrell fans and newcomers to this unusual varietal, this event is for you! Monastrell is known by many names throughout Spain and France such as Mataro and Mourvèdre. With juicy flavors of dark forest fruit, mission figs and blackberry tea, this wine is one of our favorites. If you're a fan of Cabernet Sauvignon, you're bound to like Monastrell...

Sep 26, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

Brothers at Drava Wines bring worldly flair to the Lodi wine scene

Drava Wines' Steve and William Carson, in their tasting room festooned with flags of Croatia and Slovenia

The brothers at Drava Wines, one of Lodi’s latest wineries, are not only making deftly crafted small lot wines, well worth checking out. They also bring a worldly flair to the Lodi wine scene

This coming Saturday (September 24, 2016) William Carson – who co-owns Drava Wines with his older brother Steve Carson – will be boarding a plane for a long flight to Maribor, the second largest city in Slovenia. His mission: to do the honors of being the person to cut off the first 2016 cluster from the single oldest grape vine in the world (also documented in The Guinness Book of Records), located right alongside the River Drava, at the center of this ancient city...

Sep 22, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

How Viñedos Aurora Petite Sirah defines the unique topography of Lodi's Clements Hills

Viñedos Aurora Petite Sirah harvest in morning sun rising over Clements Hills

Since 2006 the Lodi Viticultural Area has been sub-divided by 7 more American Viticultural Areas, primarily on the basis of differentiated soils and topographies. You may ask, why is this so – is not the understanding of Lodi wines and vineyards complicated enough?

Apparently. Heck, there are major wine publications that still don’t know Lodi exists. It’s hard for narrow, stubbornly entrenched media pundits and wine world cognoscenti to wrap their heads around the idea that there are places on the West Coast other than, say, Napa Valley and Sonoma County that produce regionally defined wines of world class quality, unique unto their own. But that's another matter.

There are reasons why growers and winemakers look at Lodi as being a sum of different parts. Most of Lodi's growth as a wine region over the past 25 years has been outside the original area surrounding the City of Lodi, which is defined by an extremely deep sandy loam (i.e. Tokay Series) soil on a visibly flat, lower elevation (0 to 150-ft.) plain. This historic area – where the vast majority of Lodi’s old ancient vine plantings (50 to over 100 years old) are located – is officially recognized as the Mokelumne River Viticultural Area.

Sep 19, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

MK's Lodi Carignan is a phenomenal expression of this underappreciated varietal

Chris Storm and his daughter in their ancient vine Carignan vineyard

Carignan has always been prized as a black skinned blending grape in wine regions like Southern France, Spain and California. But in relatively rare instances, it makes a deep, sumptuous varietal red wine when bottled on its own; especially when vinified from old to ancient vines (50 to over 100 years old) in special regions such as Montpeyroux or Saint-Chinian in France’s Languedoc-Roussillon, Montsant or Priorat in Spain, or Lodi or Contra Costa in California...

Sep 15, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

Jessie's Grove's Wanda Bechthold personifies Lodi's long, intriguing history

Every weekend in Jessie's Grove Winery, Wanda Woock Bechthold shares the 150-year-old history of her family's vineyards in Lodi

A lot of Lodi’s recent redefinition as a wine region of some prestige has to do with its tangible treasures. A plethora of ancient vine plantings, for instance: scores of 50 to over 100-year-old plantings of Zinfandel, Carignan, Cinsaut, Grenache, or even mangled, unkempt patches of the once-popular Tokay grape, easily viewed alongside the road as visitors sail through the vineyards, skipping the light fandango between wineries.

But Lodi’s treasures are also indubitably found among its growers and winemakers. For example, visitors to many of Lodi’s wineries – such as LangeTwins Family, Mettler Family, Harney Lane, Borra Vineyards, or Klinker Brick – will invariably find themselves conversing with fourth or fifth generation Lodi natives, whose families first began farming in the region as far back as the 1800s. Contrast this with wineries in even the most established coastal regions of California, where ownership rarely survives a second generation...

Sep 12, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

Mettler Family's Pinotage brandishes Lodi's newfound hipness

Pristine 2016 Pinotage in Mettler Family's home vineyard

One of the finest examples of Pinotage – a crossing of Vitis vinifera varieties (Pinot Noir x Cinsaut) originally bred in South Africa by a Stellenbosch University Professor of Viticulture named Abraham Izak Perold in 1925 – is grown right here in Lodi, California...

Sep 5, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink