Lodi captures Best of Show and numerous Golds at State Fair, what happens in wine competitions and age-old thoughts on wine appreciation

Blind tasting of Lodi reds.

A Lodi wine is named #1

First, this just in: The 2025 California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition just announced that this year’s “Best of Show Red” is the 2023 St. Amant Winery Barbera, which happens to come from Lodi’s Jahant appellation. It is hard to achieve something as lofty as this—chosen as the best red wine out of thousands of others entered into a wine fair that happens to be the oldest (ongoing since 1854!) and perhaps most prestigious in the country.

Barbera, as it were, is a grape that yields wines of very high acidity, far higher than almost all other black skinned varieties, but in Lodi’s sun soaked environment this acidity finds just the right amount of balance with the grape’s varietal fruit character. That is, when grown in Lodi, the typically high acid of the grape has a way of embellishing the fruit profile of Barbera, rather than taking over with a sharp, palate-prickling tartness...

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Exciting first for American grown wines—Bokisch’s Lo Xalet Cava (champagne style sparkler) crafted from authentic Spanish grapes

Bokisch Vineyards' Liz and Markus Bokisch introducing Lo Xalet, America's first cava style sparkler, at their Clements Hills-Lodi winery.

Hang on to your hats, Lodi wine lovers, because the latest innovation coming out of Lodi is a doozy: The 2023 Bokisch Vineyards Clements Hills-Lodi Lo Xalet ($60). This is the first champagne method sparkling wine in California grown and crafted in the style of Spain’s cava (the Spanish word for sparkling wine).

To be an authentic cava style sparkler, a wine has to be made from the traditional grapes of Spain’s Cava D.O. (Denominación de Origen, or “Designation of Origin”), perched along the Mediterranean Sea in Catalonia’s Penedès region, south of Barcelona. The required grapes indigenous to Cava form something of a “holy trinity”...

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A new Cerasuolo inspired rosé is already rocking the Lodi wine scene

A rosé that thinks it’s a red

Take a gander at this bottle of wine adorned with the plainest of labels, explaining exactly what it is: The 2024 Kirschenbloom Lodi Rosé ($24), produced and bottled by Sandlands Vineyards. However, looks can be deceiving. There is nothing plain or ordinary about this wine because it is already a game changer in the Lodi wine scene, perhaps in all of California.

First thing you notice through its clear glass is that it is a very rosy, an almost reddish colored rosé. I can tell you, after having tasting it, that it is dry as a bone, very lively and energetic with prickly fresh fruit acidity, and deep, deep in flavors suggesting peak season cherry with a touch of kitchen spice. The wine’s dryness, in fact, is only emphasized by the barest sensation of tannin, the firming sensory quality derived from skins and seeds of grapes normally found in red wines. 

It is a rosé, in fact, that tastes as light and zesty as any of today’s rosés, yet is a little richer than that. It has a sturdiness that forces you think of a red wine as you sip it... 

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