Once upon the time there were two career chefs who met in a super-fine big city restaurant, got married, worked their fingers to the bone. Some would say it was a perfect combination since she was a pastry chef and he an executive chef, so it was match made in culinary heaven. Dishes and dessert,…
At the Historic Vineyard Society In the City tasting in San Francisco this past May 10, 2025, 42 wineries or brands presented a surprising variety of wines (not just Zinfandel!) sourced from some 65 vineyards certified by the non-profit organization known as the Historic Vineyard Society (a.k.a., HVS). Since its founding in 2011, HVS has…
Lodi is made for barbecue The weather is warming up, folks, hitting the 80°s although in Lodi wine country we’re still enjoying those cool Delta breezes. Time to get out of the house, enjoy the rays of sun and cook up some barbecue! For years now, Lodi winemaker/grower Mike McCay of McCay Cellars has made…
Blind tasting of Lodi reds. A Lodi wine is named #1 First, this just in: The 2025 California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition just announced that this year’s “Best of Show Red” is the 2023 St. Amant Winery Barbera, which happens to come from Lodi’s Jahant appellation. It is hard to achieve something as lofty…
Hang on to your hats, Lodi wine lovers, because the latest innovation coming out of Lodi is a doozy: The 2023 Bokisch Vineyards Clements Hills-Lodi Lo Xalet ($60). This is the first champagne method sparkling wine in California grown and crafted in the style of Spain’s cava (the Spanish word for sparkling wine). To be…
A rosé that thinks it’s a red Take a gander at this bottle of wine adorned with the plainest of labels, explaining exactly what it is: The 2024 Kirschenbloom Lodi Rosé ($24), produced and bottled by Sandlands Vineyards. However, looks can be deceiving. There is nothing plain or ordinary about this wine because it is…
Wine stirs the spring, happiness bursts through the earth like a plant… —Pablo Neruda One month into spring in 2025—finally, nights are less chilly, days are warmer, and the sun is up until past 7:30! ‘Tis also the season of transition at our tables. Our taste for red wines goes from heavier reds, such as…
There is a brand new, handcraft local wine label here in Lodi, started up for all the right (at least in our book) reasons: To save a special old vineyard. Make no mistake, old vineyards in Lodi need saving. Many of them are in grave danger of disappearing, mostly because sales of value priced wines…
This past April 2 at the 2025 Wine Market Council (WMC) Annual Research Conference and Members Meeting, held in the City of Napa, there was some illuminating discussions on the overall state of the American wine industry. Some of the burning questions that were addressed included: • What are the core reasons explaining the current…
Bud break and beautiful bones It’s that time of year when grapevines are bursting all over with new buds. When 2025’s spring equinox arrived up this past March 20, most of Lodi wine country’s vineyards were still bereft of these tiny buds. But during the last week of the month, when temperatures finally started to…
Last week Mark Chandler, Chief Judge at the California State Fair Wine Competition, announced that Marian’s Vineyard, located in Lodi’s Mokelumne River appellation, was named the 2025 “Vineyard of the Year” by the State Fair Wine Industry Task Force. Each year one vineyard out of the entire state of California is accorded this lofty honor….
Night and day You might want to pass Goal and scroll all the way down to the end of this post to look at the list of Lodi grown wines that strongly express terroir—the catch-all French term for “sense of place,” in reference to environmental factors defining vineyards and wine regions perceived in sensory qualities…
One of the beauties of a warm climate region such as Lodi is that you can now find sparkling wines made from alternative grapes more naturally adapted to Mediterranean climate zones. Not that Chardonnay and Pinot noir—the two primary grapes of France’s famed Champagne region—aren’t found in Lodi. There is, in fact, plenty of Chardonnay…
Nowadays we talk a lot about crisp, light, minimally or “non” oaked white wines. That’s because they represent cutting-edge wines becoming increasingly associated with Lodi. We push that fact because we want to explode the myth that Lodi only produces big, fat, ultra-ripe wines. This is not, however, to take away from fuller bodied white…
Why are there perpetually conflicting reports on either the health benefits or health risks of wine? Simple answer: Wine is an alcoholic beverage. It is the alcohol content that is identified as the potentially dangerous substance, often as a carcinogen (i.e., cancerous agent). Most recently, in 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) put out a…
For me, moving to Lodi fifteen years ago was a conscious act of embracing my inner wine lover. There were practicalities. At the time, I was hooked on Zinfandel as the best possible everyday drinking wine, and Lodi was where nearly half of California’s Zinfandel was grown. Mind you, by then I had already been…
How is your contemporary wine grape IQ? Are you up on the latest “alternative” varietals? Should you even care? If a grape makes perfectly delicious wine, I would say “yes” to the last question. The way I see it: There are many grape varieties—hundreds of them, probably, grown all over the world—that may be new,…
Once I was standing in a Berkeley wine store with a reputation for “cool” wines, when I saw a woman burst through the door, march straight to the counter and ask, “Can you help me pick out a white wine to drink tonight?” In his best, calming, Al Franken-like voice, the store manager said, “Okay……
Tannin is a major sensory attribute of red wines. Like the important role acidity plays in all the variations of white wines, sparkling wines and rosés, the factor of tannin content varies among all the red wines of the world. Differentiations among red wines depend primarily upon the grape variety from which the wines are…
When wine lovers talk about acidity in wine, they are not talking about anything mysterious or highfalutin. If you’re a human being who eats what most people eat, you already understand acidity. Almost everyone knows, for instance, lemons and limes are very tart in terms of acid content. Therefore you do not bite into lemons…
The news, according to a local ABC correspondent, is that “Lodi’s Wine and Chocolate Weekend events went on as planned, highlighting the wines the region has to offer.” This was plain as day throughout Saturday the 15th, as wine and chocolate lovers went from winery to winery to savor the local wares. It was quite…
Lodi always wins more than its share of top awards in blind tasting competitions manned by professional wine judges. So much, it’s hard to keep up with them. We have to make special mention, though, of one result from the 2025 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition announced just this past January, in which the ‘Red…
Since Lodi‘s immensely popular Wine & Chocolate Weekend is coming right up (February 15-16, 2025), it is a perfect time to talk about a dish that, back in 2006, a Philadelphia chef named Tony Lawrence—also known as the “Global Wine Chef”⏤created for a big public event. It turned out to be, no exaggeration, the “perfect”…
January is usually the time when pundits in various facets of the industry (trade, retail, marketing, media, restaurants, etc.) take out their crystal balls and weigh in on the imminent direction of consumers. Even if you already know exactly what you’ll be buying or selling, it’s good to know what everyone else is up to….