I love going to Lodi, CA for wine tasting. Now everyone talks about Napa and Sonoma when they mention California wine areas, but Lodi has a special place in my heart because 1) It's super close. Seriously 10 minutes and I'm there; 2) It's far less pricey than the Napa and Sonoma areas (usually); 3) It's the first place I ever tried Old Vine Zin.
So, when my friends mentioned that they have a weekend called First Sip, I knew that it was going to be great. The wineries had only started storing the wine in the last few days, so it was a great chance to go an experience newly barreled wine. There were 40 wineries offering food, tastings and drinks, so what a great way to spend the weekend. Here's a run down of the places that I went and my thoughts (if I can remember them......we went to a lot of wineries):
Berghold Estate Winery - Recently my parents mentioned they were interested in getting an old school bar put into their house and I was super impressed with the huge one on display at Berghold. The place has a lot of cool antiques. The cabs were our favorites there.
d'Art Wines - Our first stop of the day and also our first barrel tasting. It's fun to taste the barrels, cause it's still so much like juice. This place also had some delicious lemon olive oil. One of my friends bottled his own bottle, however, it was just basically filling up a bottle and using the machines to put the cork and label on.
Harney Lane Winery - One of my favorite. The wine is seriously so delicious, I can hardly stand it. It's one of the newer wineries and I have a bottle of their zin waiting in my wine rack.
Jessie's Grove - I know they probably hear this all the time, but when I went there, I couldn't stop seeing Jessie's Grove to the tune of Jessie's Girl. I don't remember a lot about this one, it was near the end of the first day. But they make the Earth, Zin and Fire wine that I've had before.
Macchia - My friend is a wine club member here. They have a ton of yummy zins with cool names like Mischievous, Ambitious, Voluptuous, Victorious, etc. They also have a wine that raises money for breast cancer research called Boobylicious. They have a delicious sweet muscat called Sensuous, that I have waiting for a day when it isn't so could outside! Can we also talk about how they had a taco truck on premise and had delicious $3.00 burritos. Seriously, I kind of dream about those burritos to this day.
Michael David - Amy has already shared her love of the Petite Petit and I'm a wine club member here. A favorite of mine.
Periano - Amy recently talked about The Other wine. These are my everyday wines. They have a bunch of decent relatively cheap wines. We bought a case to split and the grand total was $6 a bottle. Awesome.
Dancing Coyote Wines - They had a moscato barrel tasting which was so super sweet and yummy. They also have some very cool labels. This was a second day stop so I didn't buy anything that day, but I'm definitely going to have to next time.
Vino Piazza - Again this was another stop, but holy cow they have a ton of wineries all nestled together. They had a really cleverly named wine that I cannot for the life of me remember that I totally wanted to buy. However, my 9 bottle purchase the day before made me a little gun shy. However, that just means I'll have to go back.
I so should have kept better notes, cause I know we made it to like 4 other wineries that I don't remember! Which just goes to show you how awesome it was right? Now I've just got to get prepped for the next Lodi Wine Event. Will it be Wine and Chocolate or Zinfest? Stay tuned.
