Wine Bloggers and Lodi...The Best of the Best

Last week, Winery Wanderings spent 72 glorious hours in Lodi with wine bloggers and writers from all over the country. Here’s what rose to the top of the experience.

A surprise tasting of 1946 Old Vine Zin at M2 winery: It was an amazing experience to taste wine as old as we are. It had a strong hint of Tawny port with a great nose. It went down smoothly with a little heat. Words can’t describe what a great experience this was.

There were vines in every direction and, unlike Oregon vineyards, it was a flat view all the way to the horizon in every direction. Coming from Oregon almost all the vines are on sloping hills. In the Lodi area everything is flat and all the rows are perfectly in order, over 100,000 acres of vines is a lot of grapes.

Meeting new friends and experienced bloggers and  their willingness to share their best practices : Thank you to Andy Harris, Kristy DeVaney, Mary Cressler, Sean Martin, Dayna Smith, Ryan O’Connell,The Traveling Winers, Sarah Wolcott, Jennifer Nelson and all the folks from Zeyphr Adventures for making this weekend the best experience ever.

Friday mystery dinner at M2 with “The Wine Abides.” Laine Montgomery is one fine vintage of a guy. His hospitality  was awesome and Stacey Caton and  M2’s staff made this a night we’ll never forget.

One- on -one conversations with winery owners and winemakers: From the opening event meeting the owners of Mohr Fry Ranch,  Acquiesce Vineyards owners Sue and Rodney Tipton, M2 Wines, Michael David Winery, Durst Winery and all the others who sponsored this amazing weekend. This is why Lodi is so popular. It’s called service with a “grape big smile.”
Jack and Sass got to meet Storm Trooper and Darth Vader  okay, Mary and Sean too. Their session on social media was one of the best. We can’t wait to catch up with them in Portland for a refresher session…over wine , of course.

Learning to tweet. Started at zero and now at 130 followers. That’s real progress in a week.

Two new favorite varietals ; symphony and albarino. We’ll be searching for those in our wine shops for sure.

The best Camp Director Allan Wright. All he needs now is  a whistle. Awesome job to him and his entire Zephyr Adventure Travels staff.

That’s just a summary of the amazing things we experienced at our first Wine Blogger’s Conference. Can’t wait to attend WBC17 in Santa Rosa next November. For those of you who shared the experience with us, why not add your favorites to our list …..