Last night (Wednesday November 15) the Lodi Winegrape Commission (LWC) celebrated their 25th anniversary with a social event at Hutchins Street Square. Stuart Spencer put together a retrospective video showing how 25 years ago, Lodi winegrape growers knew they had a special viticultural area but were largely growing winegrape varietals falling out of favor, such as Tokay, French Colombard, and Chenin Blanc, while consumers were demanding wines made from popular varietals such

As mentioned before, I'd like to make entirely different wines each year, working with different growers across the Lodi appellation. We brought in three two-ton winegrape lots in 2015, and here's the status of them. Going with a Rhone theme in 2015, we took Grenache grown by Gregg Lewis in the Clements sub-appellation on Highway 88 just north of the Mokelumne River on a hillside. These were grown on quadrilateral cordon. We also took Syrah grown by Mettler (Arbor Vineyard

Growing up in suburban Denver, I was always more concerned with the score of the Broncos game than I was with wine or winemaking. However, after graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville and subsequently living in Europe and Morocco for about 14 years, I gained a new appreciation for life's little things. Among them, wine, food, and travel. I have visited 50 different countries and each one has left it's small mark on who I am today. The most important of these c

We don't have a section about the owners so I'll make a blog post about myself. I've lived in Lodi for around 17 years but grew up in suburban Denver. I first attended Colorado State University majoring in Agronomy before transferring to University of California Davis after my dad mentioned how much more fun it would be to be a viticulturist than the less interesting agriculture Colorado could offer. I graduated from UCDavis in 1996 with a degree in Fermentation Science (the

I've been asked a number of times what our specialty wine is. I thought this would be a good topic for a blog post. Lodi has tens of thousands of acres planted to winegrapes and we have an incredible diversity of varieties grown. I'd like to go the opposite of specializing - we'll try to buy different varieties from different growers every year and keep things new. We are very small and have to this point only bought two ton lots hand harvested in macro bins which we pick u

Our old one was home-made and we don't know much about site coding and design so we got some much needed help. We'd like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Ryan Otten who did the redesign. Thanks so much Ryan! William and I look forward to sharing thoughts (pertinent and random) on this blog section so keep checking back. Please reach out to us via email or social media. We like hearing from people!