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.
Ripken makes DIY, unconscious wines
Indoors Out‘s Dean & Derek builds it, and all the more reason to come to the Ripken family’s winery… In real life, contractors don’t arrive on Friday and leave you the following Sunday with a gleaming, new, 2,000 foot outdoor living area, complete with a 40×18 foot arbor, wet bar and fire pit. But this is television, and it’s also Lodi’s Ripken Vineyards & Winery — where you always find a rusted metallic pig with angelic wings proudly flying high on a pole because, as Richard “Rip” Ripken is fond of reminding everyone, “they said Lodi would make good wine..
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Apr 13, 2011 at 9:32 PM
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The ZinFest commemorative bottling
Artist Vince McIndoe and m2’s Layne Montgomery create a memorable ZinFest bottling… Each year the Lodi ZinFest commissions one of the region’s most respected wineries to blend a commemorative label ZinFest bottling from their finest cuvées. In years past, Michael~David, Macchia, St. Amant and Klinker Brick have had that privilege, and this year m2 has those honors. What does Garrison Keillor have to do with whipping up a great Zinfandel in Lodi? For Layne Montgomery, m2’s winemaker/proprietor, it’s a matter of “making things better.” As we sat down this past March to taste the separate components going into the 2009..
Continue » Apr 11, 2011 at 9:46 PM
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ZinFest School’s savory lesson plan
The ZinFest Wine School at Lodi’s ZinFest Wine Festival, taking place this coming May 14 in the lush riparian setting of Lodi Lake Park, will offer wine lovers a picnic basketful of opportunities to learn while you savor the vinous bounties of Lodi. For instance, have you ever wanted to experience the task of a winemaker, blending wines sourced from different vineyards or barrels to make the best possible wine? Michael Perry, a 25 year veteran in the wine industry (and Direct to Consumer/Wine Club Manager of m2 Wines), will start the school off by helping you blend your own..
Continue » Apr 8, 2011 at 9:53 PM
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The amazin’ codgerly !ZaZin
He’s a poet, he’s a picker, sings Kris Kristofferson in Pilgrim. A walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction… Since 1992, winemaker Patrick Campbell has been pickin’ grapes outside of his home vineyard/estate atop Sonoma Mountain, working with old time Lodi family growers to produce a wine he calls REDS: a red wine, of course, and one that has set a quality standard for $10-$12 retail priced wine with its remarkably consistent balance of qualities associated with Zinfandel, Carignane and Petite Sirah culled from Lodi’s old vine, heritage plantings. Hence, the wine’s original mottos, “REDS – a wine for the..
Continue » Apr 2, 2011 at 9:58 PM
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The most voluptuous Lodi zin of all
Is there such a thing as a “classic” Lodi Zinfandel? Good question, because in many cases, the style of a winemaker or winery certainly does trump sensory qualities often associated with vineyard sites. Michael~David’s Earthquake Zinfandel, for example, has become somewhat iconic: consistently black as night, big in alcohol, muscular in tannin, and yes, as strongly oaked (pungent vanillin/smoky aromas and flavors) as they are in richly ripened, jammy mixes of black and red berry fruitiness. At the almost opposite end of the scale, Michael~David’s 7 Deadly Zins is usually fairly light and soft, lower in tannin and oak,..
Continue » Mar 24, 2011 at 10:17 PM
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Lodi Tempranillo takes the cake
Who is that gaucho, amigo, why is he standing there in your spangled leather poncho? Suddenly Lodi has a shiny new wine producing specialist in town; although not totally “new,” because he’s been nursing wine grapes here since the late nineties, at the far western edge of Lodi’s Clements Hills AVA, where the Mokelumne River flows from the Sierra Foothills through rolling, idyllic 400-600 ft. hills topped with alluvial soils on clay loams. Nevertheless, the just released 2008 Dancing Fox Old Father Vine Clements Hills Tempranillo ($25) represents winemaker/proprietor Gregg Lewis first varietal bottling of this grape; and in a..
Continue » Mar 22, 2011 at 10:23 PM
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Barbera, the shut-up-and-drink-it wine
A dozen or so years ago a wine/foodie contrarian named Willie Gluckstern came out with a ridiculously cheap (in a good way) $12 book called The Wine Avenger, guaranteeing that you can “become a wine/food genius in one hour.” This was actually an exaggeration: it would probably take a person of reasonable intelligence and functioning eyesight less than 30 minutes to “get” Gluckstern’s basic, on-the-money, plainly spoken premise, neatly summarized in this illustration from Gluckstern’s book: “First, do no harm,” Gluckstern writes, about selecting the best wine for a dish. “Food amplifies everything in a wine. That mean lighter wines..
Continue » Mar 18, 2011 at 10:32 PM
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Akin Tannat is truly like none other
Lodi’s customary cutting edge… Lodi is so far out ahead in many aspects of winegrowing, most folks aren’t even aware of it. Most wine “experts” don’t know either — otherwise, you’d be reading about it in more places. Perfect example: The 2006 Akin Estates, Christesen Vineyard Reserve Tannat — a red wine so bodaciously full, rich and meaty, you can practically eat it with a spoon while savoring its smoky, viscous flavors, redolent of fleshy plums, bing cherry and blackberry, with smidgens of sexy leather and dusty loam. Tannat, we say? Think of a black skinned grape that produces a..
Continue » Mar 15, 2011 at 10:40 PM
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Five Lodi wines outsheen The Sheen
Winner, winner, chicken dinner, says Charlie Sheen. This month, however, members of the Lodi Wine Club have outsheened The Sheen, for they’ve reaped an assortment of five wines that demonstrate the absolute best, the latest, and the most innovative aspects of Lodi viticulture and winemaking. Five tiger blood winners! Please check out our notes on this month’s selection below; for even if you’re not a Lodi Wine Club member, each of these wines are well worth the search, and are available individually either at the respective wineries, your nearest specialty retailer, or at the Lodi Wine & Visitor Center tasting..
Continue » Mar 11, 2011 at 10:45 PM
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Hybrid Pinot Noir is shaking trees
The goal when producing their Lodi grown Pinot Noir, bottled under the Hybrid by Peltier Station label, according to winemaker JC van Staden, was “to make a good wine, not necessarily a Pinot Noir.” Okay, input scrambled, brain freeze… then you swirl, sniff and sip the 2008 Hybrid Lodi Pinot Noir once again, and the inside-information starts to seep in more sensibly: a velvety smooth, plump, pliant, softly delicious burgundian colored wine, but even more amusing in its presumptuousness — a hugely aromatic nose, at once sweetly strawberryish in a perfumed sense, with a smoky richness, nuanced with red rose..
Continue » Mar 9, 2011 at 10:52 PM
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