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.
27 reasons to be at Treasure Island fest
Lodi Wine Country returns to San Francisco Bay this coming Saturday, October 8, 2011 (1 to 5 PM) at the Treasure Island WineFest, where over 45 of Lodi’s finest producers will be pouring over 200 Lodi AVA grown wines. Advanced purchase tickets are now on sale at tiwinefest.com for $55 (tickets at the door are $65, and just $25 for designated drivers). Here’s your chance to experience the best of Lodi in the spectacular setting of Treasure Island off the picturesque Bay Bridge — one great reason for you need to be there… and here are 27 more: An Abundance..
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Sep 27, 2011 at 2:16 PM
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Lodi’s ingenioso Vermentino & Moscato
There has always been something of a Don Quixote in Jim Moore, winemaker/proprietor of Uvaggio, the winery formerly known by its full name, L’Uvaggio di Giacomo (“Jim’s grapes”). How else can you explain his impassioned, solitary crusade to turn the country on to Vermentino, an obscure (at least in the U.S.) grape grown in Northern Italy, the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, and France’s Provence (where the grape is known as Rolle)? In Jim Moore’s world, every self-respecting American white wine lover should be drinking Vermentino, which he calls the “thinking man’s Pinot Grigio.” Ironically, in Moore’s previous life –..
Continue » Sep 22, 2011 at 2:23 PM
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Vicarmont keeps the Merlot faith
Still plenty of respect for Merlot among Lodi winegrowers… Bart: If fairytales have taught us anything, first wives are the best and second wives are terrible. Homer: Just the opposite of real life… – The Simpsons How soon we forget the finest things. Not too long ago, Merlot was the go-to wine for the majority of America’s red wine drinkers – what Chardonnay was to Bridget Jones, white Russians to the Big Lebowski. Then this varietal suffered the indignity of being disparaged in the movie Sideways (2004); and soon after, became decidedly unhip. Yet good grapes are good grapes, and..
Continue » Sep 20, 2011 at 2:32 PM
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Lodi’s 2011 zin roars in
Up until last week, Tim Holdener (winemaker/proprietor of Macchia Wines) tells us, there were some fears that “yields might be down as much as 50%.” But now that he has gotten in his fastest ripening vineyards this past week – including the dry farmed Leland Noma’s and “Oblivious” next door, yielding as little as half-a-ton per acre, as well as Dave Devine’s drip-irrigated vineyard in the Clements Hills AVA – Holdener has adjusted his expectation to “about 20% less.” Adds Holdener, “we expected a less than average year, when we saw all the shot berries that resulted from the spring..
Continue » Sep 16, 2011 at 2:41 PM
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Wine’s cutting edge lies in Lodi
12 Lodi grown grapes that are changing the face of American wine… I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s… I will not reason and compare: my business is to create… –William Blake The grape makes the wine; but of course, so does the imagination and handiwork of the vigneron. Over the past week we have been running from one end of the Lodi AVA to another, taking photographs of all the grapes we find, cultivated in this Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta influenced region. Lodi grows a broader range of wine grapes (and more of virtually all..
Continue » Sep 9, 2011 at 3:03 PM
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Grape makes the wine, part 2
What a difference a grape makes, indeed… Of all the major and cutting-edge varieties of Vits vinifera grown in California today, Syrah is the only wine grape Lodi doesn’t crush more of than any other region (Fresno beats out Lodi in Syrah acreage). Here are the sensory profiles on the other grapes of significance (other than those covered in our previous blogpost, What a Difference a Grape Makes) grown in the Lodi AVA. WHITE WINE GRAPES SAUVIGNON BLANC (also called Fumé Blanc in the U.S.) Nose: Green melon aromas, often tinged by noticeably herbaceous (like cut grass, weeds, bell pepper,..
Continue » Sep 3, 2011 at 3:16 PM
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