Bluesky

Piquepoul, Grüner Veltliner, Cinsaut, Blaufränkisch—four contemporary varieties possibly spelling the future of California wine

Early morning Picpooul Blanc harvest, Acquiesce Vineyards, Mokelumne River-Lodi appellation. How is your contemporary wine grape IQ? Are you up on the latest "alternative" varietals? Should you even care? If a grape makes perfectly delicious wine, I would say "yes" to the last question. The way I see it: There are many grape varieties—hundreds of them, probably, grown all over the world—that may be new, unknown, exotic or even strange to most of us here in America. Yet in the parts of the world where these grapes come from, they are practically pedestrian, making perfectly familiar drinking wine. What may be strange here is usually an everyday thing elsewhere. Or vice versa. Take, in a reverse-case scenario, a grape everyone knows here in California: Zinfandel, which (despite the commercial dominance of grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay) is still the most widely planted grape in Lodi. Zinfandel, however, is not grown in Spain, France or Germany, three of the largest wine countries in Europe. And why should Spain, France or Germany care about Zinfandel? They have plenty of grapes of their own to make wine from...

Putting to bed the myth that light and crisply balanced whites can't be grown in warm climates

Clements Hills-Lodi harvesting of Assyrtiko, a Mediterranean grape of Greek origin known for retaining a refreshingly high acidity grown in even the hottest, dryest climate. Albariño, Assyrtiko, Bacchus, Bourboulenc, Chenin blanc, Clairette blanche, Grenache blanc, Fiano, Kerner, Macabeo, Parellada, Piquepoul, Riesling, Vermentino, Xarel-lo and more... The other day I was telling an old friend/colleague about a fantastic 20-year-old bottle of white wine grown in Lodi I recently enjoyed. How it tasted fresh as a daisy and, a little surprising, was made from Chardonnay⏤a grape not exactly considered the pièce de résistance of Lodi, a region better known as the "Zinfandel capital of the world." He stopped me and said, "Wait a second... there is white wine in Lodi?" He wasn't being facetious. Needless to say, I told my friend that Lodi is like any other commercial wine region, and any region that grows grapes for wineries that put the kazillion bottles of wine on grocery store shelves across the country has to grow white wine grapes, and lots of them...