Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/580744
80 { THE SOMM JOURNAL } OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015 This September, The SOMM Journal teamed up with LoCA (the Lodi Winegrape Commission) to host a three-day exploration of the Lodi Viticultural Area, located in the mouth of the Sacramento– San Joaquin River Delta, east of San Francisco Bay. We will file a full report on their discoveries in our year-end issue. Lodi is easily the country's deepest well of classic wine grapes (i.e. Vitis vinifera) in terms of planted acreage and yield—produc - ing more than all of Sonoma County and Napa Valley combined. Not coincidentally, the regions to which Lodi's mild Mediterranean climate bears the closest resemblance are, in fact, mid–Napa Valley (between Oakville and Calistoga) and inland Sonoma County (east and north of Healdsburg). "Viticulturally speaking," Alder Arrow recently wrote on jancis - robinson.com, "Lodi is a treasure trove." It is why artisanal pro- ducers from David Ramey to Forlorn Hope have recently been going there to source exotic varieties, from Alvarelhão, Albariño and Alicante Bouschet to Kerner, Vermentino and Zweigelt. Lodi's bounty of heritage plantings—especially own-rooted Zinfandel plantings, 50 to over 100 years old—is what compelled Bedrock's Morgan Twain-Peterson and Turley's Tegan Passalacqua to make their first personal vineyard investments in the Lodi AVA. We asked five of Lodi's winegrowers to share their thoughts on what makes Lodi special, and ended up with five different perspec - tives on this giant-sized wine region, which has recently awakened to flex its vinicultural muscle. Dusky sky over Harney Lane vineyard. Authenticity In Search of What Makes The Lodi Viticultural Area So Special? story and photos by Randy Caparoso