Brothers at Drava Wines bring worldly flair to the Lodi wine scene

Drava Wines' Steve and William Carson, in their tasting room festooned with flags of Croatia and Slovenia

The brothers at Drava Wines, one of Lodi’s latest wineries, are not only making deftly crafted small lot wines, well worth checking out. They also bring a worldly flair to the Lodi wine scene

This coming Saturday (September 24, 2016) William Carson – who co-owns Drava Wines with his older brother Steve Carson – will be boarding a plane for a long flight to Maribor, the second largest city in Slovenia. His mission: to do the honors of being the person to cut off the first 2016 cluster from the single oldest grape vine in the world (also documented in The Guinness Book of Records), located right alongside the River Drava, at the center of this ancient city...

Sep 22, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

How Viñedos Aurora Petite Sirah defines the unique topography of Lodi's Clements Hills

Viñedos Aurora Petite Sirah harvest in morning sun rising over Clements Hills

Since 2006 the Lodi Viticultural Area has been sub-divided by 7 more American Viticultural Areas, primarily on the basis of differentiated soils and topographies. You may ask, why is this so – is not the understanding of Lodi wines and vineyards complicated enough?

Apparently. Heck, there are major wine publications that still don’t know Lodi exists. It’s hard for narrow, stubbornly entrenched media pundits and wine world cognoscenti to wrap their heads around the idea that there are places on the West Coast other than, say, Napa Valley and Sonoma County that produce regionally defined wines of world class quality, unique unto their own. But that's another matter.

There are reasons why growers and winemakers look at Lodi as being a sum of different parts. Most of Lodi's growth as a wine region over the past 25 years has been outside the original area surrounding the City of Lodi, which is defined by an extremely deep sandy loam (i.e. Tokay Series) soil on a visibly flat, lower elevation (0 to 150-ft.) plain. This historic area – where the vast majority of Lodi’s old ancient vine plantings (50 to over 100 years old) are located – is officially recognized as the Mokelumne River Viticultural Area.

Sep 19, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

MK's Lodi Carignan is a phenomenal expression of this underappreciated varietal

Chris Storm and his daughter in their ancient vine Carignan vineyard

Carignan has always been prized as a black skinned blending grape in wine regions like Southern France, Spain and California. But in relatively rare instances, it makes a deep, sumptuous varietal red wine when bottled on its own; especially when vinified from old to ancient vines (50 to over 100 years old) in special regions such as Montpeyroux or Saint-Chinian in France’s Languedoc-Roussillon, Montsant or Priorat in Spain, or Lodi or Contra Costa in California...

Sep 15, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

Jessie's Grove's Wanda Bechthold personifies Lodi's long, intriguing history

Every weekend in Jessie's Grove Winery, Wanda Woock Bechthold shares the 150-year-old history of her family's vineyards in Lodi

A lot of Lodi’s recent redefinition as a wine region of some prestige has to do with its tangible treasures. A plethora of ancient vine plantings, for instance: scores of 50 to over 100-year-old plantings of Zinfandel, Carignan, Cinsaut, Grenache, or even mangled, unkempt patches of the once-popular Tokay grape, easily viewed alongside the road as visitors sail through the vineyards, skipping the light fandango between wineries.

But Lodi’s treasures are also indubitably found among its growers and winemakers. For example, visitors to many of Lodi’s wineries – such as LangeTwins Family, Mettler Family, Harney Lane, Borra Vineyards, or Klinker Brick – will invariably find themselves conversing with fourth or fifth generation Lodi natives, whose families first began farming in the region as far back as the 1800s. Contrast this with wineries in even the most established coastal regions of California, where ownership rarely survives a second generation...

Sep 12, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

Mettler Family's Pinotage brandishes Lodi's newfound hipness

Pristine 2016 Pinotage in Mettler Family's home vineyard

One of the finest examples of Pinotage – a crossing of Vitis vinifera varieties (Pinot Noir x Cinsaut) originally bred in South Africa by a Stellenbosch University Professor of Viticulture named Abraham Izak Perold in 1925 – is grown right here in Lodi, California...

Sep 5, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

What ARE the 100 grapes of Lodi?

In Lodi's Mokelumne Glen Vineyards: 2016 Kerner grapes, producing one of California's most cutting-edge wines

Among the most "surprising" things cited by visiting wine bloggers during this past month's Wine Bloggers Conference (i.e. #WBC16, August 11-14, 2016) is the fact that there are over 100 varieties of European wine grapes (Vitis vinifera) grown in the Lodi Viticultural Area.

Lost among the dozens of positive blogs posted since #WBC16 has been this salient fact: it should not be much of a surprise. Vitis vinifera, after all, originated in the Mediterranean Basin, and Lodi's climate is squarely Mediterranean, as is most of the rest of California's coastal wine regions. Lodi is a home away from home for classic European varieties...

Sep 1, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink

Lodi's 2016 harvest is all of the above (so far)

2016 Zinfandel harvest in Harney Lane's Lizzy James Vineyard

You may have heard: so far the 2016 wine grape harvest in the Lodi Viticultural Area has been early, it has been late, and it has been normal. The crop has been bigger than usual, and also smaller. So which is it?

All of the above, of course. What’s “normal” is that you hearing conflicting reports because it all depends on which grapes and which sites winegrowers are speaking about when giving their assessments...

Aug 25, 2016 at 11:42 AM Permalink

LangeTwins Family's Nero d'Avola bolsters Lodi's reputation as a cutting-edge wine region

LangeTwins Family's Joe Lange introducing wine bloggers to the 2014 LangeTwins Family Nero d'Avola during the speed tasting at the recent Wine Bloggers Conference in Lodi

The future of California red wine is here. Imagine the taste of the plumpest, drippiest, shimmeringly red, mid-summer Bing cherry filled out with a belt of tannin strapping the tongue like soft Italian leather, and zapped by completely natural, zesty, fresh fruit acidity.

Also imagine that this red wine is neither light nor heavy in body; but rather, a bouncy, moderately weighted 13% alcohol. A red wine with the type of fluid, food friendly drinkability that grandpa and grandma keep muttering about when talking about the “good ol’ days” when wines didn’t give you a headache, even after a jug was emptied in one sitting... by just two or three people...

Aug 22, 2016 at 12:30 PM Permalink

Snapshots and bloggers' fond memories of the Wine Bloggers Conference in Lodi

Wine blogger, Rob Frisch (Odd Bacchus), experiencing break-of-dawn Viognier picking in Lodi's Phillips Farms

The 2016 Wine Bloggers Conference (August 10-14, 2016) has come and gone through sleepy ol' Lodi Wine Country like the digital tornado it was: nearly 300 wine blogging demons, plus a couple dozen wine industry professionals attending as speakers or observers (wine blogging as a marketing medium, after all, is an animal of a different stripe).

It went well, if we say so ourselves. But don’t take our word for it. Here is a photo log, along with insights from a number of those in attendance...

Aug 16, 2016 at 2:40 PM Permalink Comments (1)

Lodi 101 for this week's visiting wine bloggers

Enduringly healthy, nimble 115-year-old Zinfandel in Lodi's Marian's Vineyard (July 2016)

Starting this week (Wednesday, August 10) and for 4 days thereafter, over 300 online wine journalists and distinguished speakers will be gathering here in Lodi for the 2016 Wine Bloggers Conference.

Lodi wines and grapes, of course, won’t be the conference's only topics of discussion; but they will be the major ones. So in expectation, for the benefit of our visiting bloggers, here are 12 basic things they might want to keep in mind about Lodi Viticultural Area as they dive deeper into specifics and start their live adventures in the vineyards and wineries...

Aug 8, 2016 at 7:00 AM Permalink