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.

Factors explaining Zinfandel's spectacular food-versatility
Cellar dinner at St. Amant Winery, a Lodi Zinfandel specialist.
The environmental factor
It's time to talk about Zinfandel. Oh, I admit, for me it's always time to talk about Zinfandel. That is because I am what people often used to call a "foodie." Better than "wine geek," I guess.
Be as it may, Zinfandel is a far, far more food-versatile wine than many wine lovers (especially the geeks) may think. I came to that conclusion after over 30 years of observation and logical conclusions working in or with restaurants, my former career. Even today, when reaching for a bottle for dinner, I am more likely to pop open a Zinfandel than any other varietal wine of any color...
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Finding ideal wines for foods is as easy as putting together ingredients in a dish
No-brainer of a food and wine match: Spicy, meaty, smoky, savory baby back ribs (in this photo, cooked by Lodi winemaker Mike McCay) with spicy, meaty, smoky, savory Petite Sirah (poured by Lodi winemaker Gerardo Espinosa of Anaya Vineyards).
Picking a perfect wine for a dish, or preparing a perfect dish for a pre-chosen wine, is a lot less mysterious than you may think. In fact, it's easy as pie.
Make that, easy as ice cream sundae. Everyone knows, for instance, that vanilla ice cream and hot chocolate syrup go great together because both the ice cream and syrup are sweet yet vanilla and chocolate are contrasting flavors that compliment each other. There can also a complimenting contrast of temperature (when hot fudge goes on cold ice cream). For textural contrast, you might add walnuts (soft/crunchy/sweet/nutty) and whipped cream (creamy/airy); and for even more and different flavors, bananas and a cherry.
Call that dessert nirvana. It is also a basic example how we cook⏤putting ingredients together that just make sense⏤as well as how wines and foods are ideally matched...
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Artistic colors bring new meaning to our favorite images of Lodi wine country
Artistic rendering of a caravan of Zinfandel pickers—ushered through the old vines like triumphant troops—on a colorful early autumn morning in Lodi wine country.
I spend a lot of time going over my own photos of Lodi wine country. The best ones, I think, are the accidents. It is one thing to see something beautiful in a vineyard. It is another to capture that beauty with a camera. If you're lucky you snap a photo that you find to be very expressive; but only later, when you are sitting at a desk.
More often than not, though, even with the photos you like the best, you wish they said more. Take, for instance, this close-up below of second crop Carignan grapes taken on a blindingly bright October morning, several weeks after the harvest. I don't know what you see, but what I see is that the grapes themselves are fuzzy, like purplish mud. Not nearly as scrumptious looking as when I saw them with my own eyes in the vineyard.
The camera's eye, on the other hand, captured the leaf's intricate network of veins⏤making me imagine random roadways on a distant planet like Mars⏤etched into the Carignan leaf, which was turning red and crinkly in the aftermath of the season, long after the green color necessary for photosynthesis was gone...
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Why Lodi produces delicate, fragrant styles of red wine contradicting everything you may have heard about warm climate regions
Harvest morning in Zinfandel block over 100 years old on east side of Lodi's Mokelumne River appellation.
When a rose is but a rose
In our previous post we addressed the matter of Putting to bed the myth that light and crisply balanced whites can't be grown in warm climates.
This time around, let's talk about red wines in warm climate regions. Particularly Zinfandel.
For the longest time it has been thought that the biggest, ripest, heaviest and fruitiest Zinfandels come from the warmest regions of California, such as Lodi. Therefore, in cooler climate regions, such as Sonoma County or Napa Valley, it is assumed that most Zinfandels are among the lightest and most subtle in their varietal fruit profiles.
Problem is, as anyone who has ever compared Zinfandels grown in regions such as Lodi, Sonoma County or Napa Valley knows, this assumption is not necessarily true. In fact, it is usually wrong...
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Putting to bed the myth that light and crisply balanced whites can't be grown in warm climates
Clements Hills-Lodi harvesting of Assyrtiko, a Mediterranean grape of Greek origin known for retaining a refreshingly high acidity grown in even the hottest, dryest climate.
Albariño, Assyrtiko, Bacchus, Bourboulenc, Chenin blanc, Clairette blanche, Grenache blanc, Fiano, Kerner, Macabeo, Parellada, Piquepoul, Riesling, Vermentino, Xarel-lo and more...
The other day I was telling an old friend/colleague about a fantastic 20-year-old bottle of white wine grown in Lodi I recently enjoyed. How it tasted fresh as a daisy and, a little surprising, was made from Chardonnay⏤a grape not exactly considered the pièce de résistance of Lodi, a region better known as the "Zinfandel capital of the world."
He stopped me and said, "Wait a second... there is white wine in Lodi?" He wasn't being facetious.
Needless to say, I told my friend that Lodi is like any other commercial wine region, and any region that grows grapes for wineries that put the kazillion bottles of wine on grocery store shelves across the country has to grow white wine grapes, and lots of them...
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Stonum Vineyards is a little Lodi handcraft winery that could
Stonum Vineyards' tasting room and trelliised Zinfandel fronted by an organic vegetable and flower garden (the latter, also cultivated as a beneficial insectory).
Teeny-tiny Stonum Vineyards, located on Alpine Rd. on what locals call the "east side" of Lodi, is growing up.
But lest you think this means they've joined the ranks of big or even medium-sized producers, think again. The winery's production has recently topped off at about 1,000 cases a year⏤minuscule even by the standards of other small Lodi wineries. According to owner/grower/winemaker Kathy Stonum, that's as far as they go.
"We want to remain hands-on," says Ms. Stonum. "We'd like to keep all the work in the family, not have to hire people from outside..."
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Winemakers and journalists taste and talk about aged Lodi wines, up to 27 years old
Zinfandel from Turley's 2010 Dogtown Vineyard harvest, going into a bottling tasted and discussed this past week, nearly 14 years later.
Last week (May 14, 2024) a most unusual Lodi tasting (even for us!) was conducted, per the request of four visiting journalists representing Wine Enthusiast magazine: Tonya Pitts (Contributor, Wine Reviewer), Anna Christina Cabrales (Tasting Director), Sara Ventiera (Senior Digital Editor) and Anthony Eyzaguirre (West Coast Advertising Account Manager).
We tasted 14 Lodi-grown wines from vintages going back as far as 1997 (coming up on 27 years old).
The visiting editors were curious about two things: 1) do Lodi wines age well?, and 2) if so, how?
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Wines reflecting Vino Farms' push towards organic, biodynamic farming and grapes conducive to Lodi's natural environment
Vino Farms' The Bench Vineyard; biodynamically farmed Vermentino alongside the Mokelumne River in Lodi's Clements Hills AVA.
Since 2018, Vino Farms has been farming a good chunk of its 4,500 or so acres in the Lodi appellation in multiple fashions falling under the broader umbrella that can be described as sustainable.
This past week, when presenting his family's showcase sustainable vineyard⏤a Clements Hills-Lodi AVA property called Grand Vin Lands⏤Vino Farms VP/Partner Craig Ledbetter told a group of visiting journalists from Wine Enthusiast Magazine...
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LangeTwins Family's newly released Redtail Vineyard is based upon an exciting, potentially groundbreaking grape called Ancellotta
Ancellotta, a native Italian grape grown in LangeTwins Family's Redtail Vineyard, Jahant-Lodi AVA.
LangeTwins Family Winery and Vineyards has done it again. This industry leading family winery and winegrower has just released a red wine joining their Single Vineyard portfolio of sustainably farmed, estate grown wines. It is a sensational blend of Nero d'Avola (33%), Zinfandel (33%), and a grape called Ancellotta (34%).
Zinfandel, everyone knows. Nero d'Avola is a Southern Italian grape finding increasing favor among a growing number of vintners up and down the state, and many American consumers are already fans of Nero d'Avola bottlings imported from Sicily.
But Ancellotta? This is a black-skinned grape that is practically unknown, even among professionals working in the trade (including the most studious sommeliers), media and production industries. Even if you happen to be a wine geek who has read about the grape in texts or books, in all likelihood you still have no idea of how it looks or the way it grows in a vineyard, much less what kind of wine it produces...
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The latest wines sourced from Mokelumne Glen Vineyards fulfill a heroic story of an exotic grape obsession
Among the multiple clones of Riesling cultivated in Lodi's Mokelumne Glen Vineyards.
The heroic tale
Let's talk about the continuing saga—and it really is a story of heroic proportions—of the Lodi appellation's Mokelumne Glen Vineyards.
First, a summary of the story up until today: It started when a serious grape bug took an extra-big bite out of Bob Koth, a Lodi educator and grape farmer, in the early 1990s when he and his wife Mary Lou Koth visited Germany where their daughter Ann-Marie was studying on a Fulbright scholarship. After tasting a number of outstanding German wines, they found a new obsession.
Soon after returning home to Lodi, the Koths removed the blocks of Flame Tokay and Zinfandel cultivated on their property, tucked into an oxbow-corner of the Mokelumne River, on the east side of the appellation of that same name. Within a few years, the old plantings were replaced by what grew to be no less than over 50 different cultivars of German as well as Austrian origin...
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