Letters from Lodi

An insightful and objective look at viticulture and winemaking from the Lodi
Appellation and the growers and vintners behind these crafts. Told from the
perspective of multi-award winning wine journalist, Randy Caparoso.

September 10, 2012 | Randy Caparoso

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