Early days of harvest in Lodi

7 AM, September 10, 2012: Zinfandel picked for McCay's Truluck's bottlng (west side of Lodi's Mokelumne River AVA)

Of yearly harvests, Carl Sandburg once waxed poetic:

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

… and some of our own memories of the first few weeks of Lodi’s 2012 harvest:

August 22: Sauvignon Musque grapes in LangeTwins vineyard; ready-to-pick, zesty edged, exotically scented flavors

August 26: Fields Family's Ryan Sherman with his first pick of Zinfandel, which he is fermenting on their native yeast

August 26: planting of Cabernet Sauvignon in Anaya Vineyard (new 50 acre block on Tully Rd., in Lodi's Clements Hills)

August 26: Gerardo Espinosa (Vinedos Aurora Wines) with one of 30,000 vines planted in new Anaya Vineyard

August 26: Vinedos Aurora's Gerardo Espinosa with his uncles, growers Victor and Gerardo Anaya, who have been farming their own wine grapes in Lodi since 1988

September 5: Adam Webb (Odisea Wines) doing a literal hand punch-down of Bechthold Vineyard Cinsault, picked the day before

September 5: Odisea winemaker Adam Webb

September 8: Berghold Vineyards tasting room

September 8: Sensory "taste test" at Kidder Family Winery

September 8: Kidder Family owner Aaron Kidder

September 8: Klinker Brick's Farrah Felten pouring zin

September 8: getting ready for dinner in amongst the Primitivo vines at Harney Lane Winery

September 8: Harney Lane owner wearing his harvest beard

September 8: it's wine o'clock in Harney Lane's vineyard

September 10: Zinfandel picker in McCay Cellars' Truluck's Vineyard

September 10: picking out the MOG ("material other than grapes) in the Truluck's Zinfandel vineyard

September 10: McCay Cellars winemaker/owner Michael McCay in "Napoleon" mode

September 10: ah, Lodi Zinfandel in the morning...

September 10: Truluck's Zinfandel