ZinFest is Lodi’s annual celebration of wine, food and fun that takes place at Lodi Lake. This year’s ZinFest Grand Tasting took place on May 18. As a prelude to ZinFest, a blind tasting of ancient vine Zinfandel was organized on May 17 by the Lodi Winegrape Commission. The tasting was held in the Ballroom at Wine & Roses in […]
Lodi ZinFest is the annual celebration of Lodi wine, food and fun that takes place at Lodi Lake. The 2019 event will kick off on Friday, May 17 and run through Sunday, May 19. A few of this year’s highlights include: Friday, May 17 2019 ZinFest Blind Tasting – A Study of Ancient Vine Zinfandels of California. This tasting will […]
Almost every day is a wine day for us, so we are always ready for a wine day celebration. By that I mean a day specifically designated by an organization or individual on which to celebrate a specific varietal wine or just wine in general. These celebrations often involve special events and lots of sharing on social media with the […]
LoCA, the Lodi Winegrape Commission, recently held a wine tasting titled “How Do Lodi Wines Compare to the Best In the World? (A Blind Tasting with a Panel of Professional Wine Educators)” as a prelude to their annual Zinfest celebration. I was pleased to be a guest at the tasting and put my blind tasting skills to the test. It […]
It is possible to enjoy wine on many levels. Some of us are happy to open a bottle of wine and simply enjoy the flavors. Others also dive into wine regions, grape varieties and winemaking techniques. Even fewer have the passion for actually making wine. Such is the case for Lisa and John Gash whose home winemaking experience led them to make wine on a commercial basis in 2010 and to establish PRIE Vineyards & Winery in Lodi.
Take one 2016 Lodi wine calendar, add a different bottle of Lodi wine for each month and what do you get? An fun wine project resulting in a year-long enjoyment of Lodi wines. The inspiration for this project was a 2016 Lodi wine calendar and two bottles of Lodi wine that we received as gifts from LoCA — the Lodi Winegrape Commission.
As with many Italian families, wine is an important part of Scotto family life. For at least five generations, Scotto family members have been making and selling wine, first in their native Italy, then in New York after the first family members immigrated to the U.S. in 1883.
Even before leaving Brooklyn for California, the family purchased grapes from Lodi, California growers to make their table wine. That connection between the Scotto family and Lodi growers continued after they moved to California in 1963.
We recently had the opportunity to taste the second vintage of the Lodi Native Project. This collaborative project is designed to showcase Lodi’s heritage Zinfandel vineyards by producing single-vineyard wines following a standardized protocol involving minimal intervention in the wine cellar. The idea is to show what the vineyard itself has to offer by taking the winemaker’s individual style out of the wine making process. The first vintage, 2012, was released in March 2014 and we tasted that first vintage as well.
If you are at all familiar with what is happening in the Lodi wine world, you have probably heard of Mokelumne Glen Vineyards. If you are a fan of German and Austrian wine varieties, then you most certainly know that Mokelumne Glen Vineyards is home to plantings of Kerner, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Bacchus, Dornfelder and Blaufränkisch, to name just a few. In addition, there is the “German Collection”, a block of over 30 German and Austrian varieties.
Borra Vineyards does not bottle Barbera as a varietal wine every year, but clearly the variety is special to Steve Borra. It was the first wine Borra bottled when he established his winery in 1975. Back then Borra was the first boutique winery established in Lodi.
We enjoy wine, food and travel. Pull That Cork is a chronicle of our wine adventures, the food and wine pairings we create and our travels which are increasingly organized around wine.
