Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/46939
Mad About THE AVA'S LOCAL COMMISSION HAS GONE LOCA, TALKING DIRECTLY TO CONSUMERS TO LET THEM KNOW THAT IN THIS REGION, WINE IS AN ALL-CONSUMING OBSESSION by Randy Caparoso and Meridith May L odi is justifi ably known for old vine Zinfandel—there are more 50- to 100-plus- year-old Zinfandel plantings in this Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region than anywhere else in the world. But for the same reasons Zinfandel vines can go on and on, like the Energizer bunny, in Lodi's relatively trouble-free Mediterranean terroir—climatically akin to that of mid–Napa Valley—Lodi has also recently emerged as California's leading producer of alternative wine grapes. Cutting-edge grapes like Albariño and Alicante Bouschet, Verdelho and Touriga, Tempranillo and Tannat—you name it, Lodi is now growing it and supplying wineries inside and outside the region with material to satisfy consumers' ever increasing thirst for new and adventurous sensations. There is a wider variety of wine grapes commercially grown in Lodi than anywhere else in the U.S., and probably the world. Harney Lane 2010 Albariño is bright and cheerful. The soils of Lodi don't usually lend themselves to the kind of minerality we found in this lovely wine, which tasted as if it was grown in Rías Baixas. Winemaker and grower Mike McCay surveys old head-trained Zinfandel vines, some as old as 80 years, in sandy loam soils in Lodi's Truluck Vineyard, farmed by Keith Watts. 92 / the tasting panel / november 201 1