There are plenty of American wineries founded with the intention of specializing in one grape, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot noir or Zinfandel. There is a much smaller handful hanging their hats on grapes like Tempranillo, Syrah, Mourvèdre or Grenache. But Petite Sirah? That may take some guts. And there is one, based in Napa,…
Lodi is known for its heritage Zinfandel and, increasingly, its huge diversity of grapes and wines (over 100 commercially grown varieties, by recent count). Where else in California can you say, for instance, you can find more brands of Albariño and Tempranillo than Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon? You can also think of the Lodi Viticultural…
There are a few new things afoot at Lodi’s Oak Ridge Winery, which is good news for wine lovers who appreciate a good $10, $12, $16 or $18 wine. And who in their right mind doesn’t appreciate a good $10 to $18 wine? Man does not live by fancy-schmancy $100 wine alone. While Oak Ridge…
There is an old adage in the industry, oft-repeated by the usual pundits: California Zinfandels do not age. Not that Zinfandels fall completely apart after, say, 10 or 15 years in the bottle. But rather, that they just don’t get any “better,” or more enjoyable, than when they are usually consumed, less than 5 years…
Happy Valentine’s Day from Lodi wine country! For our photographic memories of this past weekend’s 22nd Annual Lodi Wine & Chocolate Weekend (February 9-10, 2019), we asked local online marketing specialist Frances Siria – who applies her multifaceted talents to her own Signature Online Marketing company – to memorialize some of her favorite moments. Here…
In her yearly summary of the latest statistical reports, Dr. Liz Thach MW, who teaches at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, describes the state of the American wine industry in 2019 as “Slowing but Steady, and Craving Innovation” (our italics). Somewhat alarming, perhaps, to Lodi Viticultural Area grape growers – who supply a whopping…
The wines of Lodi, perhaps more than that of any other wine region, are known for their round, gentle, fruit-forward qualities, which are intrinsic to the appellation’s mild Mediterranean climate and grape-friendly soils. But another big reason why Lodi’s annual Wine & Chocolate Weekend attracts both seasoned and burgeoning wine lovers alike from near and…
Tom Hoffman, Heritage Oak Winery’s owner/grower/winemaker, likes to have things both ways. On one hand, he appreciates the beauty of pure varietals – wines expressing the qualities of one grape, and one grape only. At the same time, he well knows the advantages of blending – weaving the qualities of multiple grapes into seamlessly and…
Recently, to update ourselves, we conducted a blind tasting of 14 of our Lodi grown reds fashioned from Petite Sirah (a.k.a. Durif). We found a uniformity of quality comparable to Petite Sirahs from other California wine regions (example of Lodi’s competitiveness: at the recent 2019 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competion, Lodi-based producers such as Karen…
Are the best Zinfandels bottled as 100% varietals, or are they best as products of judicious blending with other wine grapes? The answer – going by our own tasting notes of 13 different Zinfandels presented during the formal, sit-down “Flights!” tasting put on by ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers) in the ballroom of San Francisco’s…
This week – on January 17-19, 2019 – marks the annual San Francisco celebration of Zinfandel put on each year by ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers). Not every producer of California Zinfandel will be there, but most of them will be, and Zinfandel lovers will have an opportunity to taste and compare from among the…
It’s ba-a-a-ack… Lodi wine country’s most popular yearly event! Lodi’s Wine & Chocolate Weekend takes place on the Saturday/Sunday of February 9 & 10, 2019, from 11 AM to 4 PM on both days. Why is this weekend so well loved? Let us count the ways. • A chance to drop in on no less…
In Part 1 of our Four 2018 wine grape lessons, we discussed how, like all the fine wines of the world, the increasingly impressive wines of Lodi are defined primarily by the grapes that go into them. Since grape morphology – that is, the size and weight of clusters and berries, color and phenols in…
The months of August, September and October are the climatic peaks of each growing season in Lodi wine country, as they are in all the wine regions of the Northern Hemisphere. These are the months when wine grapes reach full maturation, thus ready for harvest. It is also the time of year when we rush…
Lodi is undoubtedly California’s oldest “up and coming” wine region. Although wine grapes have been cultivated here since the 1860s, its reputation for artisanal style, small-production, sustainably farmed wines has emerged only within the past ten to twenty years. Today, the sleeping giant (there are more wine grapes grown in Lodi than, say, Napa Valley…
File Lodi wine country’s latest new wine under the category, “Just another Lodi original.” We’re talking about a true champagne style wine: the 2017 LVVR Lodi Verdelho Sparkling Wine ($27), released just before Christmas 2018 – just in time for New Year festivities! – and produced from the fragrant Portuguese grape (Verdelho) first introduced to…
We call this page on lodiwine.com a “blog,” but obviously it isn’t like other blogs. It is not a forum from which we invite you (our dear readers) to rant and rave and freely opine, and neither do we. Our blog’s purpose is to communicate stuff having to do with Lodi grapes, wines, vineyards, our…
Attention, shoppers. If you haven’t already noticed, this holiday season may be the best in years for finding great wine deals. Make that the best ever. Why? For one, there is more variety of styles on retail wine store shelves than ever. It used to be, for instance, that all California Chardonnays were fat, flabby,…
2018. Remember this year, which will in all likelihood turn out to be a red-letter vintage for the Lodi Viticultural Area. Most of Lodi’s vintners have been pretty low-key about this. Almost as if they don’t want to jinx a good thing, while the promising new wines are still resting in tanks and barrels. But…
Because we are nosy, we asked a few people associated with the Lodi wine industry about the first time they became hopelessly “hooked” on wine. Not everyone is born into it, like many of the third, fourth, even fifth or sixth generation winegrowers in the Lodi wine region (in that regard, Lodi is almost “weird,”…
At the beginning of this month (December 2018), PRIE Winery quietly released its 2017 PRIE Silvaspoons Vineyard Alta Mesa-Lodi Mencía ($33). Only 1 barrrel (adding up to 22 cases) was made; representing, as it were, the first commercial bottling of Mencía grown and produced in California – significant even if a single barrel is less…
Like many of Lodi’s own growers and vintners, Steven Kent Mirassou is a living, walking, talking piece of California wine history. In Mirassou’s case, as a representative of six generations of California winegrowing; his lineage tracing back to French emigrant Pierre Pellier, who first founded a winery and established vineyards in Santa Clara Valley (now…
To kick off 2018’s National Zinfandel Day week, this past November 14, over 100 winemakers and growers came together from both inside and outside the Lodi AVA for a Technical Workshop co-sponsored by the Lodi Winegrape Commission and ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers). This educational industry event took place in Oak Farm Vineyards’ historic redwood…
In the current (December 2018) issue of Wine Spectator – America’s most widely read wine magazine – Lodi is described as “the engine of California’s wine industry” in a 6-page spread, entitled Lodi Looks Ahead – California’s grapegrowing dynamo is adding fine wine to its résumé. Writes Romano, “By the mid-1980s, Mondavi and a team…