Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/16170
Lodi Today Dude, Where’s My Wine? BEHIND GNARLY HEAD ZINFANDEL’S RUNAWAY SUCCESS IS THE SECRET OF THE VINES story and photos by Randy Caparoso In recent years all but the most hoity-toity wine connoisseurs have grown accustomed to the fact: During the past decade and a half, Lodi has been producing wine every bit as good as those from other valleys of the West Coast. I should know, since I was one of about 60 professional wine judges at the late Jerry Mead’s 2002 New World Wine Competition, where once we named a rich, sleek, succulent Syrah-based red our Best of Show award winner, out of over a thousand other wines. Turned out to be a Lodi-grown Delicato Shiraz selling for under $10. Eight years later, the Indelicato family—now run by its third generation of grape growers out of Manteca, adjoining the historic Lodi wine region—are still up to their old tricks, making other coastal regions’ $30 to $60 old-vine Zinfandels look silly. Not only is the Indelicato’s Gnarly Head Zinfandel of equal or superior quality to most others, it retails across the country for around $11. To fi nd out fi rst-hand, THE TASTING PANEL visited with Robert “Bud” Bradley, the Director of Grower Operations for what is offi cially called DFV Wines, the multi-brand company owned by the Indelicatos. Bud took us out in his SUV to look at some of their older Lodi plantings, among the 125 or so separate vineyards DFV either owns or man- ages in order to feed the runaway success of Gnarly Head’s Zinfandel program (which has grown from 6,000 cases in its inaugural release in 2004, to 179,000 cases today). First stop: the James Ranch—a magnifi cent stand of head-trained vines (untrellised “bushes,” with leafy canes growing out in umbrella- like fashion), each with extremely healthy-looking, almost tree-like trunks. “What you are seeing is a 103-year-old vineyard,” says Bradley, “that has evolved within its own perfect ecosystem. Zinfandel loves the deep, rich, sandy loam soils of Lodi, and at this age, it’s almost impossible for these vines to over-crop themselves.” Why is head training perfect for Zinfandel, we ask. According to Bud, “We believe that the best red Zinfandel comes from head- trained vines; so much so, in fact, that we’ve been asking many of our growers with trellised vines to convert back to head training, to best fi t in with the Gnarly Head program.” As the temperature began to climb—on this particular day in early August, only up to 86° (lower than most of Napa Valley on that day, C M Y CM MY CY CMY Bud Bradley, Director of Grower Operations for DFV Wines. K we should add)—we drove to another one of Bud’s favorite sites: Kramer Vineyard, planted between 1943 and 1945. In this vineyard, every plant seemed to grow with its own maze of twirling, twisting arms; some with canes reaching only about fi ve feet high, and others seeming to reach for the sky, seven to eight feet tall. “Kramer is the vineyard that inspired me to suggest the name ‘Gnarly Head’ when I originally proposed the brand to the family,” said Bradley. “It also happened that one of them is a surfer, so he loved the name.” We asked how it was that so many of Lodi’s vineyards have thrived The 2008 Gnarly Head Zinfandel is quintessen- tial “Lodi” in several ways, aside from its obscenely low price, beginning with a nose of cinnamon and spice, leading to a mouthful of blackberry fl avor that is neither overripe (in Zinfandel’s usual “jammy” sense) nor green with tannin, but instead giving a feel of dense, compact, yet sumptuously soft texturing—like liquid velvet or melting chocolate—before fi nishing with vivid, wild-berry sensations spiked with crushed peppercorn. 48 / the tasting panel / september 2010 despite the imminent threat of phylloxera. “Oh, there is phylloxera here,” said Bradley, “but you can see that it doesn’t aff ect these old plantings. The soil in this part of Lodi is a sandy loam, but it is very rich, rating 100—the highest possible in fertility—on the Storie Index scale. Zinfandel and Petite Sirah are two of the few wine grape varieties that actually thrive in such rich soils. “The Gnarly Head Zinfandel, though, is always a good 19 to 20 percent Petite Sirah, which grows right alongside Zinfandel here on the west side. Things don’t really happen by accident. We grow, and we pick, strictly for fl avor, not by Brix or numbers; and we ask each vineyard, each individual vine, to give what is best for it, whether this yields 2 tons or 4 tons per acre. The good thing is that most of these vines are so old and pretty well established, they never deviate much from what they can produce . . . and what they produce is incredibly beautiful!”