Ironically, I have been impressed of late by some wines made from Lodi grapes, but by non-Lodi wineries (Forlorn Hope, Bedrock, Scholium), though I have very little familiarity with indigenous Lodi producers! Can anyone offer recommendations for area wineries making quality juice with finesse, not the overripe style that Lodi is too often associated with?
Klinker and Brick is a good one. I had a few of their wines recently, and was impressed by each one. M2 Vineyards is another good one.
Lucas is the one not to miss. Great Zin and chard, held back several years and made in a fairly AFWE, long aging style. Lovely and friendly tasting room as well.
Yup…there are some quite good wines being made from Lodi grapes…oftentimes by wineries outside
the area. The ones you mentioned. Another is Odisea, by AdamWebb and MikeKuenz, located up in the
town of Napa.
When I was there about 2 yrs ago, JonBjork (PantheonCllrs, a Syrah that is as good as any in Calif) arranged a
tasting at Borra. Their wines rather impressed me. Probably one of the best wineries is BokischCllrs…I’ve liked
them quite a lot. And have had some good ones from MokulemneGlen as well.
KenZinns has a particularly good report on EricAnderson’s Grape-Nutz site.
Tom
Fields Family is absolutely worth a visit, as is Harney Lane.
One doesn’t often hear Lodi and AFWE in the same sentence…will have to give it a look!
That’s the crazy thing. They make zins at around 14% alcohol and chardonnays in the 13s, from these vineyards 3 miles east of I-5 in Lodi, and both age really well. I had some zins of theirs from the mid 1990s a few years ago and they were fabulous. On the other hand, although they hold them back several years before release (I think the current release of their flagship zin is the 2009), I think trying the current release you still have to project forward to how they will develop, as they are pretty young and a bit rugged when trying them in the tasting room.
It does challenge my sense of how these things work, in terms of site versus harvest time versus winemaking. Another example was tasting Arcadian pinot from these Santa Lucia Highlands vineyards like Pisoni and Gary’s that I’ve only ever experienced before as big dark super-ripe pinots, but Joe Davis can harvest earlier from the same vineyards in the same vintages and produce long-aging, lighter colored, delicate styled pinots.
One thing to note is some parts of Lodi get a good diurnal swing. There’s also a range of soils and some good slopes. You can’t just write the whole region off as “warm climate”.
As far as Joe Davis goes, he chooses and manages his sections of the vineyards he sources from. Some are far from uniform, so even if they were handled and picked exactly the same, different sections would yield very different wines. Of course that’s all his judgment, and the results speak for themselves…
Though I have to admit to being one that had previously written the area off as too warm to make great juice, comments like yours and what Morgan said a few moths back on these pages (quoted below), has me reconsidering the mistaken notion of painting the entire area with the same brush. Maybe I haven’t kissed enough Lodi frogs, but I still haven’t tasted anything from the area that proves (to me) Lodi’s potential for being more than a mediocre wine producing area, but am looking forward to the 2012 Bedrock Kirschenmann and possibly renewed hope for the area.
Morgan on Lodi: “The problem with many Lodi wines comes down to the culture of farming that dominates the region- heavy irrigation, not enough canopy work, etc… Kirschenmann is dry-farmed on silica rich soils in one of the coolest parts of Lodi (if you check the weather on a daily basis like I do you will notice that Victor tracks right alongside Calistoga and St. Helena). It, along with Evangelho, are probably the two most lithe and pretty wines from 2012- and yes, they are from the “hot” areas of Contra Costa and Lodi.”
Jesse’s Grove Winery makes an amazing Cinsault, don’t know about the rest of the lineup.
Joe Dexter is making some excellent Syrahs and Chards at Lobo Loco Winery. It is an extremely small production winery that shares the Woodbridge Uncorked tasting room with other small production wineries in downtown Lodi on Lower Sacramento Rd.