What makes a wine “very Lodi?” First, it’s more than just grown and produced in Lodi. It’s also a wine that would be hard to duplicate elsewhere in the world. The finer white wines grown in Lodi, for instance, tend to be light, fresh, and ringingly pure in their fruit qualities. The region’s dependable Mediterranean…
Every “new” generation re-invents the wheel. Why not? Old-timers can recall when Robert Mondavi boldly proclaimed, in the late 1960s, that we are entering the “Golden Age of California Wine.” The 1976 “Judgement of Paris” – when a California Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon happened to “best” a collection of classic French wines of similar ilk…
Mark Chandler and Jan Burlington Chandler are well known in the Lodi community – Mark as the former Executive Director of Lodi Winegrape Commission and a current wine industry consultant and Lodi City Council member, and Jan as President of San Joaquin Sulphur Co. and a Co-Chair for Lodi Memorial Health Foundation – and together…
McManis Family Vineyards might be the largest grower of Lodi grapes still unfamiliar to most Lodi wine lovers. There are two reasons for that. Number one, the McManis Family operation is based in the south end of San Joaquin Valley in the City of Ripon, population 14,000 or so. Like Lodi, Ripon is an agricultural…
Hiro Tejima is a wine professional new to his job as Japan Director with the California Wine Institute after working many years in the Australian wine industry. Tejima, who is based in Sydney, Australia, recently brought a group of 20 acclaimed Japanese wine professionals to Lodi. The contingent included sommeliers, wine educators, restaurateurs, media and…
For what has become an autumn ritual for Lodi wine country, we advise you to block out the second weekend of November – Friday the 9th through Sunday the 11th – to partake in the 2018 Lodi Tour of Tempranillo Weekend. While there are easily over two dozen red wine grapes grown successfully in the…
Bold, decisive strokes. That’s what’s turned Lodi’s Michael David Winery from a modest (2,000-case), local winery in 2002 to a million-case winery producing wines sold all over the world in 2018. With yesterday’s news that Michael David Winery has sold their eponymous brand, 7 Deadly Zins, to the The Wine Group (TWG) – a Livermore-based…
Why sub-divide a region by smaller AVAs? In August 2006, when the TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) approved the usage of seven new American Viticultural Areas (a.k.a. AVAs) within the broader Lodi AVA (originally established in 1986), the question in the minds of a lot of people among the wine industry, the…
This past weekend, Lodi’s Bokisch Vineyards debuted a Monastrell – a Spanish moniker for the varietal more commonly known as Mourvèdre – that has to be described as no less than groundbreaking. For Lodi, as well as for California in general. First, the wine in question: The 2016 Bokisch Vineyards Sheldon Hills Vineyard Sloughhouse-Lodi Monastrell…
Leaf and Vine Winery – a small, father-and-son (Rick and Tim Keith) owned and operated company – is based in the City of Napa; and so naturally, they produce Napa Valley wines. But winemaker/partner Tim Keith is also crazy about Lodi grown grapes. Therefore he crafts six different vineyard-designate wines with Lodi stamped prominently on…
As wineries go, the Napa based Holman Cellars is definitely small-fry – only about 1,200 cases a year, which is probably just right for owner/winemaker Jason Holman, who labors as a 1-man team. And because Mr. Holman is all about, as he puts it, “unique things,” at least 60% of the grapes he uses come…
Joseph Smith and Chris Rivera are the winemaking team at Lodi’s renowned Klinker Brick Winery. Smith hails from the Caribbean nation of Belize, while Rivera’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Michoacán, Mexico. Smith has been Klinker Brick’s winemaker nearly 10 years, and Rivera has been his understudy the past four years. Together, their passion…
Like thousands of other Americans of Portuguese descent, Ron Silva – owner/grower of Lodi’s Silvaspoons Vineyards, east of Hwy. 99 located between Elk Grove and Galt – is a cattleman (Portuguese-Americans own about 46% of the dairies in California, which produce more than half of the state’s milk). Mr. Silva is also the largest grower…
Cabernet Sauvignon has been the most popular varietal red wine in the American wine industry for longer than anyone can remember. Most certainly, it has been #1 ever since the days when sales of varietal wines began to overtake generic wines (such as “Burgundy” and “Chablis”) some time during the late 1980s. Cabernet Sauvignon, as…
In recent years projects like Lodi Native – where groups of Lodi winemakers have been producing single-vineyard Zinfandels following the exact same, native yeast/neutral oak protocols (thus eliminating brand or winemaker styles as factors) – have been proving something that old-time growers and vintners have known all along: that there are differences among Lodi Zinfandel…
Throughout the vast expanse of wine regions along the Mediterranean collectively known as Southern France (or le Midi) – stretching from the Pyrenees touching the north-east corner of Spain in the appellation known as Languedoc-Roussillon, to Provence on the eastern side of the South where France bumps up against Italy – three of the most…
To Markus Niggli, the owner/winemaker of Markus Wine Co., wine grapes are like paints on a palette. The purity of the colors selected by an artist are important enough; but it’s how the colors are put to canvas – the interplay, the blending, the contrasts and textures, and of course, the arresting skill and imagination…
Since opening their doors in 2012 with offerings of their first commercial bottlings (from the 2011 vintage), Lodi’s Acquiesce Winery & Vineyards has broken down more than a few barriers, and the misperceptions associated with them. “From the beginning, we were determined to be a ‘white-wine-only’ winery,” says owner/grower/winemaker Sue Tipton. “Many well meaning friends…
Jessie’s Grove Winery’s Royal Tee Vineyard is the Lodi Viticultural Area’s oldest existing Zinfandel planting; put into the (Tokay Series) fine sandy loam of Mokelumne River’s west side, on its own (Zinfandel) rootstocks, by Joseph Spenker in 1889. The vines were originally planted at the request of Stockton’s El Pinal Winery (which eventually closed during…
Continuing our study of the impact of vineyard conditions – or terroir (i.e. “sense of place”) – on wine grape clusters and finished wines, we asked Bokisch Vineyards to gather 2018 grape samples from their multiple vineyards for us to compare, side-by-side. The well over 2,000 acres farmed by Bokisch Ranches make a fascinating study….
Scott McKenzie is a winegrape grower, husband and father. And he’s a curator of his family’s history. Stepping onto the McKenzie’s property in Acampo is a step back in time. Barns, stables, sheds, tractors, trucks, farming implements, picking boxes, a crank telephone and volumes of photos and records detail a proud family farming history that…
A quick history ofterroir-focused winemaking in Lodi What is the impact of terroir, or sense of place, on individual Zinfandel plantings in Lodi? Terroir-related distinctions can be observed in a vineyard – felt below your feet, in the air touching on your skin, in the visible responses of individual vines to their surrounding environment –…
Continued from Lodi’s single-vineyard wines (Part 1: west side growths) Ready to geek out further on Lodi’s old vine growths, and what makes them utterly unique in the entire world of fine wines? Let’s start with this… Impact of sandy loam soil When nineteenth century growers first began farming in the areas surrounding the burgeoning…
What are the top Lodi Viticultural Area vineyards identified as vineyard-designate wines on highly regarded Lodi grown bottlings, and why do they matter? They matter because of the precedent set in European countries long ago: The simple fact that the finest wine regions are associated with vineyards known to produce great wines. One could make…