Letters from Lodi
An insightful and objective look at viticulture and winemaking from the Lodi
Appellation and the growers and vintners behind these crafts. Told from the
perspective of multi-award winning wine journalist, Randy Caparoso.
The Downtown Lodi harvest menu, and becoming the 2014 SIP SAVOR Wine Tasting Champion
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.
Continue »Mettler Family’s Aglianico is a harbinger of many great wine grapes to come
The latest Mettler Family Vineyards release is the 2012 Mettler Family Lodi Aglianico ($40); an estate grown red wine of vivid purplish cast, teeming with intensely focused cherry and plum pie-like aromas, tinged with licorice and finely polished vanillin oak subtleties. Plump, full and zesty on the palate; with a layered feel furnished by round yet densely textured tannin.
Continue »Appreciating Zinfandels (especially from Lodi) like a sommelier
In seminars at the 2014 Zinfandel Advocates & Producers Experience (i.e. ZAP) in San Francisco this past January, some of California's top sommeliers presented Zinfandels from their perspective: in terms of terroir, or "sense of place."
Continue »Old vine, old time Six Hands Chenin Blanc from Cresci Vineyard
Six Hands Winery has just released a 2013 Six Hands Cresci Vineyard Lodi Chenin Blanc ($16) that is as dry as a desert, yet gushy in varietal perfumes of wild honey, green melon, white flowers and underlying minerality.
Continue »Barbecue & wine: Van Ruiten Family’s Matt Ridge tests a tried-and-true theory
At Lodi's Tin Roof BBQ it's all about barbecue. Gloriously meaty, outdoor-smoky, not-too-fatty and not-too-sweetie barbecue, which is exactly the way that owner/chef Richard Berardi likes it.
Continue »John Fogerty never slept here (101 grapes & other lesser known facts about Lodi)
Oh, lord…
Although it was the "B" side of Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1969 single record, "Bad Moon Rising" (which peaked at No. 52 on the Top 100 singles charts), in many ways the song "Lodi" has endured as one of the group's catchiest, most memorable tunes – its story line (being "stuck" in a nowheresville town), one that almost anyone can identify with.
But it was never a true story...
Continue »Michael David’s commitments lead to top honors at California State Fair
This past June 14, 2014, when the California State Fair announced the top awards resulting from its famously rigorous wine judging taking place in Sacramento each year, one Lodi winery loomed significantly among the winners: Lodi's Michael David Winery.
Continue »Brave new grapes and winemakers discovering Lodi’s Mokelumne Glen
Who'd have thunk? That a planting by a retired Lodi schoolteacher and longtime home winemaker would become the largest, most serious collection (over 40 cultivars!) of German and Austrian grapes in the U.S.
Continue »Lodi’s Bechthold Vineyard is named California’s “Vineyard of the Year”
I can't quite put words to why I am profoundly comforted by the fact that a wine can also be a place, that mere fermented grapes can coalesce into a product of such rare beauty and meaning. – Randall Grahm (owner/winemaker, Bonny Doon Vineyard)
To many of the growers and winemakers in Lodi today – now in their third, fourth, fifth or even sixth generation of Delta farming – the fruits of their labors have always been what has tethered their families to this American Viticultural Area, with or without the recognition of their peers in California or elsewhere. Lodi is as meaningful a place to its caretakers as any winegrowing region of longevity in the world.
Continue »Sonoma’s Morgan Twain-Peterson talks about his new Katusha Vineyard in Lodi
You see it in films, fiction, music, reality television, and even in the wine world: everybody loves the scruffy character with the countenance of youth and artistic soul, even when it comes with forgivable hints of bravado or brashness. Enter-stage-left, Morgan Twain-Peterson, owner/winemaker of Bedrock Wine Co. in Sonoma Valley.
Over the past six, seven years Mr. Twain-Peterson has emerged as one of California's wunderkind winemakers, with one of the most distinctive feels for terroir. In the beginning, because of his promising bloodline, as the son of Ravenswood founder/winemaker Joel Peterson; and with that, access to many of the most coveted vineyard sites in the North Coast.
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