This past week we were asked by the San Joaquin County Historical Society to summarize a history of Lodi appellation grapes at their yearly “Past, Present & Future” event… within five or ten minutes. Impossible, of course, but the thought process did give us a good excuse to draw up a 175-year timeline of this…
Two months ago, at a dinner in Lodi where a guest winemaker from Italy named Cristiana Tiberio was showing off her world-renowned Cerasuolo D’Abruzzo Rosé, I watched Lorenza Wine winemaker/owner Melinda Kearney, sitting across from me at the table, going through the usual studious tasting motions. After her first sip, her eyes looked like they…
Here’s a good story: For the past eight years Mark Chandler—the former Executive Director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission (1991-2011) as well as a past two-times Mayor of the City of Lodi—has been serving as Chief Judge of the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition, the state’s longest running professional wine judging (started in 1854!)….
Today (June 26, 2023) marks the official launch of The Old Vine Registry (re oldvineregistry.org). This is a big deal. As it states on its home page, The Old Vine Registry is “the world’s first crowd-sourced global database of living historic vineyard sites.” Its goal, “to create the world’s most authoritative record of these vineyards…
A consummate Mediterranean varietal While still a distinct minority taste, American-grown bottlings of Spanish grapes have carved out a modest niche in the domestic market over the past ten, and twenty years. In Lodi, even more so: Local wineries are currently producing more bottlings of, say, Albariño and Tempranillo than Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. Why?…
Some Lodi Albariño history Back around 2005 when Kyle and Jorja Lerner were first drawing up plans to establish their Harney Lane Winery on the Lodi property that their family, a branch of the Mettlers, had been farming since 1899, they approached Jorja’s parents George and Kathy Mettler with the proposal. The elder Mettlers gave…
Thirteen years ago Mike McCay produced his first dry rosé from Lodi-grown Grenache grapes under his McCay Cellars label. That wasn’t long ago, but at that time the vast majority of consumers were still in their Chardonnay or White Zinfandel stage. If you drank red Lodi wines, you mostly drank overly fruited or oaky Zinfandel….
Once upon a time, Jacylyn Stokes bade farewell to her home and family in Lodi. This only made her eventual return all the more fulfilling. “I am a young Millennial and female,” Stokes declared, last week while sitting at an outdoor tasting table at Consumnes River Farm, where her bottles of La Belle Nue Rosé…
Lodi is a warm-climate wine-growing region. We usually use the term “Mediterranean Climate” to describe Lodi’s climate because, to begin with, the Mediterranean Basin itself (stretching from Spain and Southern France through Italy, Greece, and the Middle East) is a vast winegrowing region, producing countless wines of amazing quality and diversity. If a Mediterranean climate…
June 21 marks 2023’s first day of summer, but we can already feel the season in the air when many of our thoughts turn to… barbecue! We’ve posted many a write-up on this food group for a couple of reasons: 1) who doesn’t love barbecue when the weather gets warm? and 2) the perfect wine…
The Lodi Wine Experience has come and gone, this past May 19-20, 2023. This, of course, was the yearly event formerly known as Lodi ZinFest, which went on hiatus after 2019 due to public health concerns. The 2023 celebration at Lodi Lake Park began this past Friday night with a Signature Dinner: a joyful gathering…
Mio Vigneto, a Clements Hills-Lodi project that has taken about eight years to come to fruition in terms of commercial production, has just released its first wine: the 2022 Mio Vigneto Clements Hills-Lodi Ribolla Gialla ($29). Ribolla Gialla is a varietal that, over the past fifteen or so years, has become one of the hottest…
Earlier this month, the Lodi wine community bade a sad farewell to Neal Overboe (1941-2023), one of the pioneers of the region’s modern-day wine industry. Mr. Overboe mentored a number of Lodi’s top winemakers, including Joseph Smith (Klinker Brick Winery), Barry Gnekow (Barry Gnekow & Associates, Vertical Palate), and Tyson Rippey (Lodi Vintners and Rippey…
The Saturday, May 20, 2023 Grand Tasting segment of the Lodi Wine Experience will be an opportunity to taste wines by 44 wineries, most of them considered the finest producers of Lodi. In 2023, however, the Grand Tasting will also feature a few producers who do not have tasting rooms in Lodi or are based…
Rosé All Day! will be the subject of the 1:00 PM Wine Seminar taking place during the upcoming 2023 Lodi Wine Experience Grand Tasting in the dreamily landscaped Lodi Lake, Saturday, May 20, 2023. Lodi-grown rosés are not just classically dry, but also made from a dazzling array of red wine grapes. Because rosé grapes…
Monte Rio Cellars—a small, independent, handcraft label owned and operated by former longtime New York City sommelier Patrick Cappiello—has just released three Lodi grown wines he is calling his “Ancient Vines” series. Many winemakers exaggerate. Cappiello does not. These three wines are absolutely “ancient” by most of the wine world’s standards; all fashioned from the…
Lodi’s first Assyrtiko Perlegos Family Wine Co. is entering its second phase, following up on this grower/producer’s inaugural releases this past October—and it’s a doozy. The big news: The release of the 2022 Perlegos Family Thera Block Clements Hills-Lodi Assyrtiko ($28), along with the family’s latest vintage of a Lodi-grown Cinsaut as well as a…
In our continuation of Everything You Wanted to Know About Old Vines and Why They’re a Big Deal—which is also the subject of our 12:00 PM Wine Seminar at the upcoming 2023 Lodi Wine Experience Grand Tasting in bucolic Lodi Lake, Saturday, May 20, 2023—let’s drill down into more specifics on why old vine viticulture…
Everything You Wanted to Know About Old Vines and Why They’re a Big Deal is the subject of the 12:00 PM Wine Seminar taking place during the 2023 Lodi Wine Experience Grand Tasting in bucolic Lodi Lake, Saturday, May 20, 2023. If you want to learn about old vines while tasting phenomenal wines made from…
Everything You Wanted to Know About Old Vines and Why They’re a Big Deal is the subject of the 12:00 PM Wine Seminar taking place during the 2023 Lodi Wine Experience Grand Tasting in bucolic Lodi Lake, Saturday, May 20, 2023. The moderator of the Old Vines seminar, as well as the following two educational…
Are you ready for a different kind of wine experience? One that takes place in a lush oasis dotted with towering oaks and willows, surrounded by the ice-cold waters of the Mokelumne River on one side and an enchanting lake on the other? Love will be in the air, as it always is during wine…
This coming Sunday (April 9, 2023) is Easter. I don’t know about you, but my Easter dinner main course is all set: a leg of lamb! What’s up with the entire idea of “spring lamb?” The USDA actually defines lamb meat as such: Most lambs are brought to market at about 6 to 8 months…
A “natural” winemaker in flux There is a micro-winery located in our State Capitol of Sacramento owned by a winemaker named Kevin Luther. Mr. Luther bottles wines under his Voluptuary + Lucid brand, all with curious, almost dreamy, artistic labels reflecting the restless disposition of the winemaker himself. Not that Voluptuary + Lucid wines are…
Many of America’s best independent winemakers are driven by passion; and not uncommonly, it is a passion first fired up by one moment of serendipity. For Arianna Wines owner/winemaker Arianno Spoto, that moment came in 2014, while she was working a harvest in Argentina‘s Mendoza region, when a colleague shared a bottle of local white…