Winning Ways

Ambitious growers and lofty winemaking goals are spurring a revolution in Lodi, California's most exciting wine destination of the moment.

- Leena Ng

Lodi may not be a name that immediately springs to mind when the topic of Californian wines comes up. But if you have ever drunk wines from California, chances are that you would have drunk Lodi wine, even if you've never heard of the wine region. The apparent obscurity of Lodi is certainly not because it is new in the game—in fact, wine grapes have been grown in this American Viticultural Area (AVA) for more than 150 years, thriving even through the period of Prohibition—or that the region is inferior to its more well-known cousins like Napa or Sonoma counties. It is simply down to the fact that in the last several decades, the majority of Lodi’s grapes were sold to larger producers like Mondavi, Sebastiani, Gallo, Sutter Home and Louis Martini.

Things are quickly changing, however, with more and more Lodi grape growers emerging from the shadows to become wine producers in their own right. So much so that the production of local Lodi wines has spiked manifold in recent years.

It’s a natural wine revolution that’s a long time coming. With the quality of the grapes on their hands, it is little surprise that the local growers in Lodi would be inspired to give a regional voice to their grapes—either by trying their hand at winemaking themselves or else hiring consulting winemakers to showcase the best of their vineyards in the bottle. And the results have spoken for themselves, with many long-time Lodi growers making their dual mark in the industry both for their grapes as well as for their diverse portfolio of wines that spotlight everything from Albarino to Zinfandel.