The legendary Maynard Amerine's shibboleths are timeless lessons in wine appreciation

U.C. Davis' legendary Maynard Amerine (1911-1998)

In 1976 U.C. Davis Professor Maynard A. Amerine published WINES: Their Sensory Evaluation with Edward B. Roessler. Amerine was a plant physiologist who had served as the chairman of U.C. Davis's renowned Department of Viticulture and Enology during the 1950s and '60s—a seminal period in the California wine industry—and Roessler was a mathematician who chaired the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the same school.

While long forgotten — especially in today's setting, in which sports journalists, ex-lawyers, MBAs, and practically anyone can become widely followed wine critics, dishing out numerical scores and opinions on wines as if they were handed down from Mount Sinai — for a time, Amerine and Roessler's rigorous approach to wine evaluation had considerable impact on the wine industry... 

Oct 13, 2020 at 9:00 AM Permalink

Lodi by the numbers, and where it stands among the rest of the world

Two heritage Lodi grapes from the 2020 harvest: Flame Tokay and Carignan

To get a true grip of the role Lodi plays in the world of wines, you need to see where the state of California stands in it. According to California Wine Institute's Discover California Wines website, California has a 60% share of the entire U.S. wine market by volume. This means about 3 out of every 5 bottles sold in the U.S. — including all imports — is grown and produced in California. California, which has (according to the Wine Institute) an estimated $114 billion economic impact on the entire country, also accounts for 95% of all American wines exported to other countries.

According to the most recent USDA statistics, the Lodi Viticultural Area crushes approximately 20.5% of all the wine grapes in California. This means just over 12% of all wine sold in the U.S. — again, including imports — is grown in Lodi. Not all the bottles may say "Lodi," since the region supplies most of the grapes going into value-priced bottles sold as "California" wine. Still, Lodi is... kind of a big deal...

Oct 8, 2020 at 10:00 AM Permalink

Some twenty-first century wine tasting terms, part 2 (palate sensations)

Lodi Tempranillo tasting

Continued from: Some twenty-first century wine tasting terms, part 1 (nose)

The all-time classic on how-to-taste-wine is Michael Broadbent's Wine Tasting, orginally published in 1968 and perennially republished ever since. It started off, as Mr. Broadbent modestly put it, as a "slim pamplet," and didn't grow that much bigger over the years. But technique-wise, it's all anyone, consumers and professionals alike, would ever need to know about wine tasting..

Oct 2, 2020 at 12:30 PM Permalink

Some twenty-first century wine tasting terms, part 1 (nose)

Acclaimed San Francisco based wine educator and journalist Deborah Parker Wong examining Lodi wine

A little knowledge goes a long way. It's also said that a little knowledge can be dangerous. I can't agree with that. What's actually dangerous, particularly to yourself, is not enough knowledge.

That's what difficult about contemporary wine tasting. Many of the wines we are often asked to appreciate today do not exactly comport with the usual "how to taste wine" instructions found in books, online pages or videos. It's one thing to learn how to see, smell and taste wine, but it's another thing to understand what you are seeing, smelling and tasting. Maybe even more important: Exactly why you are seeing, smelling and tasting certain things...

Sep 29, 2020 at 10:00 AM Permalink

The Tizona Malbec is a rare sensory experience of one of Lodi's most obscure terroirs

Lodi's LODI RULES certified Linden Hills Vineyard

The 2017 Tizona by Bokisch Vineyards Linden Ridge Vineyards Lodi Malbec ($32) is a lovely wine. What may be even more interesting is its provenance: Linden Ridge Vineyard, located in the "gray area" located in the south-eastern fringes of the Lodi Viticultural Area, in the vicinity of the census-designated agricultural hub of Linden (at last count, population 1,784), directly east of Stockton. As they say about little farming towns like Linden, if you blink as you drive past it on Hwy. 26, you'll miss it...

Sep 23, 2020 at 12:30 PM Permalink

Florida sommelier shares déjà vu from tasting Zinfandel from Lodi's oldest planting

Louis Anthony Chico, a visiting Orlando, FL sommelier getting a firsthand experience last year's Lodi Zinfandel harvest in Jessie's Grove's Royal Tee Vineyard

Last week Louis Anthony Chico, a sommelier living in Orlando, FL, wrote to us saying he had just experienced a déjà vu. It came upon tasting a 2016 Alquimista Cellars Jessie's Grove Lodi Zinfandel while listening in on a recent Zoom virtual tasting broadcast from Lodi's Jessie's Grove estate, led by Alquimista Cellars winemaker Greg La Follette and Jessie's Grove owner/grower Greg Burns...

Sep 14, 2020 at 1:00 PM Permalink

Snoop Dogg releases an important wine, and it's from Lodi!

It's not so much what the label on the 2019 19 Crimes Cali Red ($12) says than what it projects: the iconic face of the long celebrated rapper, Snoop Dogg, in muscular black and tan, with slashes of inky red and black marking pen. It practically screams "drink this wine... if you've got the guts."

So I did. The color is a deep, opaque purplish-ruby with a bright red outer rim. The aroma mixes black tea, dried herbs, a touch of tobacco/smoke, and red and black berryish fruits. But while "big" in the nose, on the palate the wine is soft, round, almost cuddly. And it has what many of the wine cognoscente would describe as a "jammy" finish — code words for super-fruity, or slightly sweet. Not super-sweet like a dessert wine, but just sweet enough to cushion the ripe fruit and generous oak sensations, keeping it from completely drying out the mouth with tannin. Like drinking chocolate cake. 14.1% alcohol, which is about par for any commercial California wine (these days many of the state's finest Pinot noirs are higher than that)...

Sep 10, 2020 at 11:00 AM Permalink

Patrick Cappiello's Monte Rio Lodi reds bring back Old California with a vengeance

Monte Rio Cellars' Patrick Cappiello

There is an unusual sense of "nakedness" in the immediacy of fruit and whiffs of tea leaf-like dusty/earthiness to the just-released 2019 Monte Rio Cellars Primitivo. Something strange for a California wine, but very deliberate for this particular wine brand which proclaims itself (on its website home page) devoted to the "Spirit of Old California."

That is to say, a style of wine harkening back to, perhaps, the 1950s or early '60s, when California vintners were not yet hooked on the taste of oak, and 12.5% alcohol was the norm rather than rare exception...

Sep 7, 2020 at 1:00 PM Permalink

Estate Crush's four versions of Bechthold Cinsaut show off this historic vineyard's magic

Dropped 2020 vintage clusters of the typically large berried/clustered Cinsaut in Lodi's historic Bechthold Vineyard, planted in 1886

What better way to pay tribute to Bechthold Vineyard, Lodi's oldest continuously farmed vineyard, than to produce four different wines from its venerated fruit, which is 100% Cinsaut.

This is what Estate Crush (Downtown Lodi's custom crush facility) owner/winemakers Bob and Alison Colarossi have done. It's as much a tribute the vineyard's diversity and the beauty of its fruit as it is the skill and ingenuity of a couple of winemakers...

Sep 4, 2020 at 12:00 PM Permalink

Robin Burcell shares her love of Lodi wine in an international best seller

Best selling writer and longtime Lodi resident Robin Burcell, with a bottle of one of her favorite wines (Bokisch Vineyards Lodi Tempranillo)

Robin Burcell is a novelist who lives in Lodi, California. She has published her own series of police procedurals, but since 2015 she has been busily co-writing international best sellers for Clive Cussler, the New York Times Best Selling author of more than 80 books of fiction — including the 1976 classic, Raise the Titanic!, plus two books turned into blockbuster movies (one of them, 2005's Sahara, starred Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, William Macy and Penélope Cruz, and was produced and distributed at a staggering cost of $241 million).

Ms. Burcell's own life has been one huge adventure. Before embracing her current career as a high profile novelist, she spent 28 years working in law enforcement. She was, in fact, the Lodi Police Department's first female officer, starting in 1983. Because of that, for years she had to make do with a converted storeroom as a locker room. She also served as a hostage negotiator and a FBI Academy-trained forensic artist, then moved to Sacramento County where she worked for 10 years as a Criminal Investigator, before retiring to write full-time in 2010...

Sep 2, 2020 at 4:30 PM Permalink