As we come to the end of another year in Lodi wine country, let’s look back at some of the highlights of 2014 gleaned through widely read wine publications and blog sites. Just a small percentage of American wine lovers subscribe to Decanter, a publication in the U.K. that bills itself “The World’s Best Wine…
Attention, last-minute Lodi wine shoppers: Caught in the usual pre-Christmas time crunch? Then we have the perfect one-stop, direct-from-the-source solution for you: Downtown Lodi‘s Estate Crush. Estate Crush is a custom-crush winery facility serving over 80 separate clients. This means they make wines for basically 80+ wineries; about half of them commercial brands, and many…
You can look at the increasingly short, dark, dreary days of December in two different ways: as a doggoned shame, or as the perfect excuse to enjoy the type of wines and foods that these days call for. Mike Hodge, co-owner of Twisted Roots Vineyard & Winery, has the perfect prescription for those who choose…
Is there a wiser wine lover than a Lodi wine lover? Lodi is just beginning to forge its reputation as a source of some America’s finest, and most cutting-edge, wines. Many of the leading producers in this respect have been around for less than ten, fifteen years. What makes Lodi wine lovers special is that…
GETTING SOME FUN OUT OF WINE When most of us enjoy our wine, we don’t like to think about it too much. We don’t need to ooh and ah over the “bouquet,” and we don’t need to take tiny sips and roll the wine in our mouth for 60 seconds before pronouncing it good. Ah,…
Burgundy, schmurgundy I started out on Burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff. Not really. But that line from one of Bob Dylan‘s classic old songs (Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues) always sounded great. Burgundy is a place in France where they grow grapes like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. During Dylan’s early (and, many say,…
How does a French winemaker named Franck Lambert, with his India-born wife Rekha, celebrate Thanksgiving here in Lodi? Monsieur Lambert was born in Southern France and educated at University of Montpellier (where he attained a Master’s degree in winemaking). He has been a quiet but influential part of the Lodi winemaking community over the past…
This coming Wednesday, November 19, 2014 is National Zinfandel Day. We know, we know: there’s a day for everything these days. But National Zinfandel Day holds significance in Lodi because: Zinfandel qualifies as California’s heritage grape because, for most of the past 160 years, it has been the state’s most widely planted grape (although today,…
LET YOUR TURKEY BE YOUR THANKSGIVING WINE GUIDE Is there anything more American than turkey for Thanksgiving, with all the extra delectable accoutrements? The turkey is one of our greatest comfort foods. Has been, as we all learned in school, since the Pilgrims sat down with the local Native Americans for that historic big meal….
Call the newly released 2013 Michael Klouda (MK) Stem Theory Lodi Cabernet Franc ($26) what you like: confused, contrarian, counter-intuitive, confounding – but you can’t call it boring. It is, in fact, the perfect red wine for wine lovers who like a little bit of wildness, even rawness, in their wine, tingling your nose and…
The expression coup de grâce technically means putting someone out of his or her misery, in a most violent fashion. But here in Lodi, it is now means a gloriously rich and original red wine – a thick, bloody red, if you will. The 2011 Coup de Grâce Lodi Red Wine (about $28) is an…
100-point scores for rating wines: not every retail store features them as their “shelf talkers,” but it seems like most of them do. But let the wine buyer beware: 100-point numerical scales – which strongly suggest some kind of authoritative mathematical precision – are, in fact, rarely accurate in terms of assessing true quality, and…
We want to revisit our video taken of Sorelle Winery estate’s 2014 Sangiovese harvest this past September 19 because it • Shows the pure beauty of the Sangiovese grape in the field, and how gracefully it has adapted to the sandy/clay loam soil in Sorelle’s vineyard, located at the southernmost edge of the Lodi AVA,…
This Saturday, October 25, 2014, one of the Lodi AVA‘s most ambitious producers ever will be opening the doors of its new tasting room and winery for the first time. Oak Farm Vineyards is a 70-acre estate (60 acres planted to vines), located near the end of N. DeVries Rd., just north of Peltier Rd….
It’s old news around here: Bokisch Vineyards‘ Markus Bokisch is one of the most interesting men in the (wine) world. We especially like him for the erudite ways in which he files his harvest reports. It’s a matter of perspective: Mr. Bokisch, after all, farms over 2,000 acres of wine grapes in no less than…
This time of year, to borrow a little from John Keats‘ phraseology, is when beaded bubbles are brimming in the bins, and winemakers are smiling with purple stained mouths. Wine flows so much like poetry in California, you almost forget that it is still an agricultural product, and that Mother Nature always has the first,…
Beneath the low key, grayish, mild mannered label of the newly released 2012 Concrete Lodi Zinfandel ($45) lies a big, flashy, super-powered expression of the grape, which has come to exemplify Lodi‘s viticultural heritage. Concrete Wine. Co. winemaker Joseph Smith, who is also the winemaker for Klinker Brick Winery, makes no bones about what he…
What makes Lodi wines special? Just ten, fifteen years ago, the stock image of Lodi was as a place where • Gigantic wineries, such as E. & J. Gallo and Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi, get their grapes for their bulk wines. • There is a lot of Zinfandel. My, how time flies. Lodi is still…
Turn of the century rise of Lodi wineries and growers’ cooperatives In 1900 Urgon Winery was founded by an enterprising German emigrant named Adolph Bauer, who recognized the need for a wine production facility at a time, during the late 1890s, when many Lodi farmers were transitioning from watermelons to grapes. With the help of…
Mokelumne (before Lodi wasLodi) The first settlers of European descent arrived in the area we know as Lodi in 1846; finding what Ralph A. Clark (Lodi – Images of America) described as “an abundant paradise,” perched just a few feet above sea level, sandwiched between the lower foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the…
In a post that recently popped up on the multiple “Best Wine Blog” Award winning Terroirist site, contributor Isaac James Baker commented on six 2012 Lodi AVA grown Zinfandels produced under the Lodi Native banner: “Tasting all six together, I was stunned by the tremendous variation in flavors and textures, and found it fascinating to…
The second week of September is usually when the California grape harvest is just getting started. This year, at this same time, many growers and vintners are saying that they are more than a third of the way through. Why the accelerated time table? Three things conspired to upset 2014’s grape carts to some extent:…
Harmony Wynelands has recently released the last of its wines from one of the Lodi AVA‘s most venerated ancient vine plantings: Mohr-Fry Ranches‘ twelve and a half acres of Alicante Bouschet, which originally went into the ground in 1921, but was completely torn out following the 2012 vintage. The 2012 Harmony Wynelands Lodi Alicante Bouschet…
WHO WANTS TO BE THE 2014 SIP SAVOR LODI WINE TASTING CHAMPION? One of the two events taking place under the SIP SAVOR LODI Grand Tasting tent at Wine & Roses Hotel on Sunday, September 28, 2014 (1-4 PM) will be a double-blind tasting to determine 2014 Lodi Wine Tasting Champion. This contest will be…