Discovering your own taste in wine beyond 100-point scores
Professional wine judges taking meticulous notes
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 are more likely to provide you with a totally hit-and-miss idea of what wines you may enjoy most. Think of it this way: most of us do not understand wine nearly as much as the way we may understand things like music, books, films, food,...
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Oct 28, 2014 at 10:42 AM
PermalinkBeauty of whole berry Sangiovese fermentation at Sorelle Winery
Sorelle Sangiovese grapes
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, just a few feet north of the Calaveras River; Gives you a good moving picture of the meticulous care that the Scott family takes in the vineyard and winery – particularly the whole berry fermentation of the Sangiovese fruit, which brings out the brightest,...
Continue » Oct 24, 2014 at 10:52 AMOak Farm Vineyards opens its ambitious new winery and tasting room
Oak Farm Vineyards' new winery/tasting room among magnificent ancient oaks
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. towards the upper-west corner of the Mokelumne River AVA. It is also the site of a plantation and stately colonial style home originally built by William DeVries in 1864. DeVries, who lived there until his death in 1908, was a tree lover: hence the numerous,..
Continue » Oct 21, 2014 at 11:14 AMBokisch Vineyards on all you need to know about Graciano, Garnacha and “egg” fermentations
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 six of the Lodi AVA's seven official sub-appellations. He supplies over 50 wineries with grapes; and not just the specialty Iberian varieties for which Bokisch Ranches is best known (Albariño, Tempranillo, Verdelho, Verdejo, et al.), but also the mainstream varieties that are in highest demand...
Continue » Oct 16, 2014 at 11:25 AMWinemakers praise 2014 harvest’s brimming purple beads in this video round-up
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, and last, word on everything. So it was with the 2014 harvest in the Lodi AVA, drawing to a close as we speak – a good two to three weeks ahead of the usual schedule. Generally speaking, both growers and winemakers have been pleased with the..
Continue » Oct 14, 2014 at 12:15 PMConcrete Zinfandel merges old school with space age technology
Concrete Old Vine Zinfandel
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 and his two partners – Tyson Rippey and Barry Gnekow of The Lodi Vintners Group (where the Concrete Zinfandel is available for sale) – endeavored to do when conceiving this new brand: "We wanted to make a high end Zinfandel as good as any other..
Continue » Oct 8, 2014 at 12:34 PMWhat makes today’s Lodi wines special?
Double threat: Adam Mettler; star winemaker for both Michael David and Mettler Family
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 known for Zinfandel, and much of the AVA's grapes still supply big wineries. But all of the sudden, Lodi is also becoming known for more, much more. We are counting at least seven "new" ways in which Lodi is now being defined in the minds of consumers,..
Continue » Oct 1, 2014 at 12:50 PM