LangeTwins Family's newly released Redtail Vineyard is based upon an exciting, potentially groundbreaking grape called Ancellotta

Ancellotta, a native Italian grape grown in LangeTwins Family's Redtail Vineyard, Jahant-Lodi AVA.

LangeTwins Family Winery and Vineyards has done it again. This industry leading family winery and winegrower has just released a red wine joining their Single Vineyard portfolio of sustainably farmed, estate grown wines. It is a sensational blend of Nero d'Avola (33%), Zinfandel (33%), and a grape called Ancellotta (34%).

Zinfandel, everyone knows. Nero d'Avola is a Southern Italian grape finding increasing favor among a growing number of vintners up and down the state, and many American consumers are already fans of Nero d'Avola bottlings imported from Sicily.

But Ancellotta? This is a black-skinned grape that is practically unknown, even among professionals working in the trade (including the most studious sommeliers), media and production industries. Even if you happen to be a wine geek who has read about the grape in texts or books, in all likelihood you still have no idea of how it looks or the way it grows in a vineyard, much less what kind of wine it produces...

  Continue »

The latest wines sourced from Mokelumne Glen Vineyards fulfill a heroic story of an exotic grape obsession

Among the multiple clones of Riesling cultivated in Lodi's Mokelumne Glen Vineyards.

The heroic tale

Let's talk about the continuing saga—and it really is a story of heroic proportions—of the Lodi appellation's Mokelumne Glen Vineyards.

First, a summary of the story up until today: It started when a serious grape bug took an extra-big bite out of Bob Koth, a Lodi educator and grape farmer, in the early 1990s when he and his wife Mary Lou Koth visited Germany where their daughter Ann-Marie was studying on a Fulbright scholarship. After tasting a number of outstanding German wines, they found a new obsession.

Soon after returning home to Lodi, the Koths removed the blocks of Flame Tokay and Zinfandel cultivated on their property, tucked into an oxbow-corner of the Mokelumne River, on the east side of the appellation of that same name. Within a few years, the old plantings were replaced by what grew to be no less than over 50 different cultivars of German as well as Austrian origin...

  Continue »

Monte Rio's Patrick Cappiello gets things off his chest while producing an astounding range of Lodi grown wines

Monte Rio Cellars owner/winemaker Patrick Cappiello. Leigh-Ann Beverley.

This past mid-December I was walking along a beach in Hawaii, toes squishing along in wet silky sand, when the phone in my board shorts rang. It was Patrick Cappiello, owner/winemaker of Monte Rio Cellars, a Sonoma County-based brand that has been making quite a name for itself for naturalistic style wine—most of it sourced from either super-old vines or regeneratively or biodynamic farmed grapes here in Lodi.

Monte Rio, Cappiello called to say, was reaching an impasse. The brand was satisfactorily established in key markets, and the wines better and more mulitfaceted than ever. But for whatever reason—primarily, no doubt, because of an overall market malaise—sales had recently stagnated. Monte Rio seemed to be fulfilling an old industry adage, that is is a lot easier to make great wine than it is to sell it...

  Continue »