California’s 2023 harvest, you might have heard, was problematic, especially in the Lodi appellation. In Lodi, the challenges were more economic than those of issues imposed by Mother Nature. It was, in short, a cooler-than-usual vintage. Theoretically, this is good, because Lodi is a warm climate winegrowing region. But as San Joaquin County Viticulture Farm…
About eight miles east of the City of Lodi, there is a short country lane called Tokay Colony Road, demarcated by Hwy. 88 to the west and N. Tully Rd. at its eastern end. It’s an interesting road because it was named for the grape variety called Tokay—more properly known by its full name, Flame…
The air is still a little nippy, if not downright damp, which is why I, for one, tend to tucker down in the safety of my four walls at night. Preferably with a bottle of Zinfandel. I drink Zinfandel with almost everything, including my favorite foods, such as spaghetti and meatballs, pan-fried pork chops, Asian…
On social media, one widely known wine journalist asked, “Why did you not list the alcohol levels of the Zinfandels you wrote about?” His explanation for his question: “Knowing the alcohol levels helps me decide if I like wine or not.” When it comes to wine, the rule is always to each his own. Neither…
The yearly San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition is a massive affair, taking place at the end of each January. The 2024 edition involved 52 professional judges tasting over 5,500 wines. Wines are entered from anywhere in North America. Consequently, when the 2024 winners of the 177 classes of wines were announced, winning bottlings hailed from…
Neither rain (luckily, minimal!) nor blustery winds seemed to deter thousands of Lodi wine lovers from enjoying the region’s 27th annual Wine and Chocolate weekend, this past February 2-4, 2024. Friday the 2nd started with intimate dinners or special tasting events at Heritage Oak, Housley’s Century Oak, Oak Farm, Peltier, Rippey Family, St. Amant, and…
There is undoubtedly no organization that has done more for a single varietal category than Zinfandel Advocates & Producers, a.k.a. ZAP. When ZAP started back in the early 1990s, Zinfandel was on the ropes. Many of the bigger, higher profile brands were dropping the varietal from their line-ups. Cabernet Sauvignon had become California’s most important…
Winter is coming Winter, you can say, is the “quiet time” of year in wine regions around the world. Yet there is a lot going on. Not just in the wineries, where cellar hands are busy topping off barrels and getting white wines and rosés resting in tanks or wood ready for bottling. But also…
While Lodi‘s 2024 Wine & Chocolate weekend is a three-day event—including individual winery dinners on Friday (February 2) and a gala Winemakers Toast at Wine & Roses Hotel on Sunday (February 4)—the main event is still the self-guided, passport style Winery Tours on Saturday (February 3). On this day, over 35 Lodi appellation wineries will…
There are photographers and there are photographers. We have invited Allison Watkins of Allison Watkins Studio to share a photo essay because of her distinctively artistic feel for wine photography. Particularly her Lodi Viticultural Area photography. Watkins lives in Napa Valley and teaches fine art photography. An inveterate inhabitant of the darkroom since high school,…
Now is the time to snag tickets to Lodi wine country’s most popular event of each year: the Lodi Wine & Chocolate Weekend! And it’s coming right up, on February 2-4, 2024! 2024’s proceedings will be the region’s 27th celebration of the theme of Lodi-grown wine, locally crafted chocolates (plus many other foods!), and of…
At the start of the 1920s, the California wine industry was still in its infancy. Yet a reading of a 1929 publication entitled Black Juice Grape Varieties In California—authored by Joseph Perelli-Minetti for USDA‘s State of California Department of Agriculture—provides a fascinating glimpse into how far the science of winegrowing had advanced since the 1850s,…
I am not a Lodi native. I have, however, lived and worked in the appellation since 2010. I am looking forward to a fourteenth year in my adopted home. For two weeks this past December (2023) I went back to my “roots,” in the Hawaiian Islands. It was refreshing to see a lot of the…
It’s that time of year when we start to talk about the most significant wine trends to expect in 2024. At the end of this past November, for instance, the Benson Marketing Group came out with 6 Wine Industry Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2024. Their first prediction: “The no-alcohol or low-alcohol wine craze continues.”…
There may be just three more shopping days until Christmas, but no reason to panic. Especially for the Lodi wine connoisseurs in your life. There is still a one-stop place to find absolutely the finest Lodi-grown wines there are to buy: the Lodi Wine Visitor Center located in Lodi at 2545 W. Turner Road. If…
2023 will go down as the year when old vines finally got their due. No longer for just the outward beauty of these plants, their astonishing longevity, or the special character of their resulting wines, but also for their significance in respect, as the recently established (June 2023) Old Vine Registry puts it, to the…
Continued from Story of an Appellation—Part 11, the state of Lodi today Making things happen in the vineyard The future of Lodi winegrowing lies in the recent past, which has been defined by two things: • The evolving identity of Lodi’s sub-appellations. • The growing importance of sustainability. It is a well-known fact that Lodi…
Continued from Story of an appellation—Part 10, Lodi’s modern day winemaking leaders Point in history There have been a few hiccups during Lodi’s transition to higher-quality wine grapes over the past forty to fifty years. For instance, Zinfandel—California’s most enduring heritage grape for the production of dry table reds—was primarily utilized to produce mildly sweet…
Christmas shopping for discriminating wine lovers is next to impossible. They may know what they like, but what that is is anyone’s guess. Taste in fine wine, as in all matters of taste, is a highly personal choice. Hence, the following list, which is not a “best of.” It is a list of a dozen…
Continued from Story of an Appellation—Part 9, the modern era, when Lodi families of German lineage took control St. Amant Winery Tim Spencer (1938-2006), who founded St. Amant Winery with his wife Barbara in 1972, was not just one of Lodi’s pioneering vintners. He will always be remembered as one of Lodi’s most inspiring winemakers/growers,…
Guest post by Elvira Fonz Gutiérrez Elvira Fonz Gutiérrez first came to Lodi this past spring of 2023 to finish her Master’s Degree in International Commerce in the Wine Industry, which began at the University of Angers in the Loire Valley wine region of France. Having completed her work, rather than returning to her home…
Continued from Story of an Appellation—Part 8, Lodi’s shift to premium grapes and the first wave of independent wineries Klinker Brick Winery The family behind Klinker Brick Winery is a quintessential Lodi story. Other than Michael David Winery, no other winery in Lodi has done more to familiarize the average American consumer with Lodi appellation…
The wines of Markus Wine Company, owned and operated by winemaker Markus Niggli, demonstrate two ways of looking at Lodi’s heritage blocks, emblematic of an appellation known for more acreage of old vines than any other region in California (hence, the entire United States). • On one hand, Niggli revers old vines as much as…
Lodi grows the ideal wines for Thanksgiving. First, the culinary reason: Turkey, as we all know, is a dry meat. Its fattiness or level of juiciness is, at best, negligible. That’s why it is usually smothered in gravy and cranberry sauce—we need both the gravy and zesty/sweet fruitiness to balance the dryness. Stuffing, of course,…