A Lodi Introduction: Old Vine Zin & More

Lodi is known for Old Vine Zin and quite frankly little else.  It's a wine region in America that is going to be known for more in the coming years, including Albarino, a classic Spanish varietal that grows incredible well in Lodi.  Here's some history and what's happening now in the AVA.

Video Transcription:

All right guys. Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. First, happy Monday to everybody. Hope everybody is off to a good week. Little interesting Mr Toad's wild ride with the stock market this morning … I hope everyone's recovered.

Secondly, one of the month club's shipments for August are going out over the next 72 hours or so. As some folks have emailed and called to wonder what's going on. Quite simply, if you watch the nightly news you know that the hot weather has been a topic of conversation. We can't ship when it's so darn hot. The big issue is not when it's on the truck going to your house, the big issue is, for the east coast folks especially, it's a five day shipment process for ground, the wine stops somewhere for the weekend and we have absolutely no control really over, not only where it stops, but what the temperature is like in the warehouse. We've had wine too many times in the past for us not to pay attention a little bit about shipping temperatures and shipping time frames. We have gotten a little bit more sophisticated about knowing, if I ship this on Wednesday and it's going to the East coast, it's likely to stop after two days. Two days puts in Colorado. Denver is actually a pretty well air conditioned facility, so that's kind of where we're at.

Third, I have two bottles from Lodi in front of me today and we don't do a lot of Lodi wine. However, the Wine Bloggers Conference, which is really on of the largest meetings of wine industry folks in the country right now, is going to Lodi next year. Two years ago it was in Santa Barbara. I attended. Little bit of a hum game for me. Excuse me. This year, just finished up at The Finger Lakes in New York. If your not familiar with The Finger Lakes, sits in western New York. There is five lakes. They literally look like fingers. They run north to south instead of east to the west. We don't get a lot of their wine on the west coast simply because New York City takes most of the good stuff. What's remaining is still small enough production that they don't need it. The wine is pretty good, it's getting better. It's a focus area for New York wine is to get the finger lakes out there so there's the marketing message of- personally through the wine bloggers conference.

Lodi is doing something similar next year. The history of Lodi is two-fold. First, it's one of the true pre-prohibition growing areas within California. At the beginning they focused on Tokay, which is a grape that you virtually never heard of any more. Even when it's still grown they make it into fortified wine now, so you're not going to see a Tokay table grape any more. Then there's also some Zinfandel vines. Lodi has some of the best old vine Zinfandel, and by old vine, I used to tell people if it's older than me, it's old vine. I'm

in my mid-30s. I realise that makes it a sliding scale so to speak, so let's just say 30 years or older and I'll count it as an old vine Zin.

There are vintners who will throw 'Old Vine' on a label after 5 years, I think it's a little ridiculous. They know it's ridiculous but they're doing it for marketing, for easier sales. That's one question to ask, or one thing to read on the back of a bottle. If it's truly an old vine, they'll tell you exactly how old it is, what year the thing was planted, and what happened and why it survived through Prohibition if it's that old. If not, why they planted it in the 60s or 70s as opposed to something else that would have been an easier sell at that time, say, Merlot.

Lodi's this fascinating growing area for two reasons. First they have these, in the heart of Lodi, the original AVA, they have all these old vines in. Those are great. Those are interesting, those are a unique look into California and what a lot of people consider a native grape here. Second, they have this [inaudible 00:03:38]. This Grenache is from the St Clements Hills. As the heart of Lodi has been built out, you're starting to have these sub AVAs pop up in the periphery. You're seeing Grenache being grown at elevation. You're seeing Albariño, which is a Spanish white wine grape, grown really all over the place and grown incredibly well, it's a grape that's adapted really well to California's temperature in Lodi.

I should mention about Lodi, we have not the most positive opinion in the wine industry of what the San Joaquin Valley and what Central California grows. Stuff grows really really well there, and if vines are not stressed out they don't produce really flavorful wine. That's why the 2 dollar wine you buy at the grocery store, the 5 dollar wine at the grocery store probably came from Central Valley. As long as you water the stuff it produces almost year-round.

That's not what Lodi's marketing these days, it's not what they're going to be known for long-term. Lodi is at the furthest northern reaches of the San Joaquin Valley, and that's a really good thing because they're only 80 or so miles inland from the San Francisco Bay. They do get some maritime influence from the bay including the diurnal temperature which is probably more closely associated with Napa than it is for the rest of the inland California Central Valley.

In any case, Lodi. They make some interesting juice. It's something they're just trying to market themselves a little bit now, I think they're still trying to figure stuff out. Is this just going to be something they focus exclusively on old vines

in? If they do that, what does that say for folks that are just planting a vineyard now, or just want to open a vineyard? Do they have to wait 35 years to really be able to take part in the marketing, or can they create sub AVAs where they focus on Grenache, they focus on Albariño. Really that's part of the question that most of us face in California, is what's your white wine grape? If you're not growing Chardonnay, what is it? What's the story, why should we be interested in it, and why shouldn't I just buy a generic Champagne or Cava or Prosecco, on the sparkling side.

Once again, Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. Hope you're having a good day. Once again, yes, wine club shipments. They are leaving in the next 72 hours, you should have an email with both a either prepaid or charged order, and then a second email with a checking number directly from us and UPS. Hope you're enjoying your week. Have a good one.