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.
A Lodi family Thanksgiving (part 2)
A winemaker’s stuffing, cranberries with bacon or cooked in rosé, and Thanksgiving chicken dinner-winner for two! How will Lodi’s winegrowing families be celebrating Thanksgiving this year? Thoughts and recipes making up part 2 of what they have shared with us… Rick Taylor – winemaker/partner, Riaza Wines: My wife Erin’s parents have a cabin up past Big Trees State Park in Calaveras County. Every year, the four of us head up the hill for the long Thanksgiving weekend. After clearing the snow from the driveway and getting a fire going in the fireplace, we settle in for a much deserved, post-grape..
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Nov 17, 2011 at 6:36 PM
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A Lodi family Thanksgiving (part 1)
Wine country stuffing, 2 ways to do cranberries & it’s off to the races… If anything, the Lodi American Viticultural Area is all about families. With ties to the land and ties among themselves, a significant proportion of Lodi families can trace their arrival to this agricultural community as far back as the 1800s. How do Lodi’s winegrowers and culinary personalities celebrate Thanksgiving? We asked six of them to share their expectations for the 2011 holiday, plus their most cherished recipes. Here is what three of them shared with us (the other three will talk about their Lodi 2011 Thanksgiving..
Continue » Nov 14, 2011 at 6:49 PM
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The Portuguese experience at Lodi’s St. Jorge
St. Jorge Winery matches bacalhau with their extraordinary Portuguese varietal wines What is bacalhau, and why is St. Jorge winemaker/grower/proprietor Vern Vierra talking about it? Bacalhau is a universal dish in Portugal and Galicia (the northwest tip of Spain); and seeing that Mr. Vierra is of Portuguese descent, his enthusiasm is understandable. Bacalhau is, in fact, the Portuguese word for codfish, and it refers specifically to the dried and salted codfish usually caught in Norway, Iceland or (more common today) off the coast of Canada’s Newfoundland. Vierra’s family first arrived in the Lodi region from Portugal in 1954. He grew..
Continue » Nov 10, 2011 at 7:12 PM
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A foodie’s guide to Lodi wine country
Many wine lovers are foodies, and foodies are defined by their inveterate, bordering on obsessive, searches wherever they may be for the “best” of what there is to eat: be it the gravity defying bread putting soufflé at New Orleans’ Commander’s Palace, the mountainous kosher pastrami sandwich in Manhattan’s Pastrami Queen, the truffle egg salad sandwich at Masterpiece Delicatessen in Denver, the squid ink risotto in Palermo’s Bye Bye Blues, the battery of poke (raw fish/seaweed concoctions) at Tamashiro Market in Honolulu, the succulent rib tips at Interstate B-B-Q in Memphis, the organ meats cassoulet at Bistro Jeanty in Napa..
Continue » Nov 8, 2011 at 7:27 PM
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2011, Lodi’s canta y no llores vintage
Lodi winegrowers extol the challenging 2011 vintage This past Saturday (October 29), Barbara Huecksteadt was out in her 3.5 acre vineyard next to her home, hand picking the season’s final two rows of grapes all by herself, as she customarily does each year. The grapes were Marzemino — a rare, spectacularly dark, handsome looking grape that originated in Northern Italy, and produces a black, sturdy, wildly aromatic red wine under Huecksteadt’s Hux Vineyards label. As she snipped and lovingly placed each cluster into her trays, she talked about her year, pretty much summarizing the story of 2011 for just about..
Continue » Nov 3, 2011 at 8:39 PM
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The winery action during Lodi’s First Sip weekend
Celebrate the 2011 Lodi harvest with wine tastings straight from the barrel! The First Sip, Lodi Wine Country’s annual end-of-harvest celebration, is exactly that: over 40 wineries will be opening their doors or tasting rooms and inviting you to enjoy the very first sips from the 2011 harvest — newly born wines, still in their raw, pristine, most rambunctious (and in many ways, most exciting!) splendor. How many wine regions offer you that kind of opportunity? Many of these wineries will also be offering tastes of unbottled 2010s and 2009s, as well as their latest bottlings, just being released.
Continue » Nov 1, 2011 at 9:11 PM
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Flash of new insights into Lodi wine
How Barry Genkow and Flash Détente’s new technology helps us an understand an old concept One of Lodi’s finest wines is m2 Wines’ Soucie Vineyard Zinfandel; which, vintage after vintage, is distinguished by an almost European quality that can only be described as earthy, loamy, and often mushroomy. M2 winemaker/proprietor Layne Montgomery often likens this wine’s distinctive complexity to the smell of “onions cooked in a beef stew.” Because you cannot find this particular quality in Zinfandels grown in other parts of Lodi’s Mokelumne River AVA – demarcated by the flat, deep, rich sandy loam soils planted by the original..
Continue » Oct 27, 2011 at 9:22 PM
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Lodi launches LoCA campaign
Lodi, CA (October 19, 2011) – If you see the word LoCA in an advertisement or billboard over the next few months, don’t worry — Lodi’s growers and wineries have not gone crazy. They’re simply telling the world how thrilled they are about the wines they produce, and how much they love sharing a taste of their life in Lodi — such an ideal place for grapes and people. LoCA is code for Lodi, California, and the growers and wineries in the Lodi American Viticultural Area want consumers to know exactly where that passion comes from: a tradition of farming..
Continue » Oct 19, 2011 at 9:39 PM
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Lodi harvest in October 2011
We often forget that wine is basically an agricultural product, which is why any winegrower will tell you: Mother Nature always has the last word. Even so, sometimes it has nothing to do with weather… Last week, as he was out in the fields analyzing Cabernet Sauvignon grapes being grown for the Mettler Family label, Adam Mettler noticed a few rows with grape bunches completely stripped of berries. “We are constantly battling Mother Nature in some blocks,” says Mettler, “but in this case, the culprit wasn’t rain or temperature… these rows were eaten by turkeys!” Otherwise, the story of the..
Continue » Oct 17, 2011 at 9:47 PM
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Harmony’s Pipe Dreams zin rolls in
When you take a tub of grapes and ferment it with the yeast that has grown naturally on their own skins, you are incorporating the vineyard’s indigenous microbiology. If those grapes happen to be Zinfandel grown in Lodi, the resulting red wine will not necessarily compare to other wines made from Lodi grown Zinfandel – you may like others better. Yet it is more likely to taste like the best possible wine made from that vineyard because you’ve allowed the grapes’ own yeast to play a part in the wine’s fermentation, and ultimately its flavor. The family at Lodi’s Harmony..
Continue » Oct 14, 2011 at 9:53 PM
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