NOTE: This page uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to present the content in the best possible manner. If you are reading this message, then you do not have a standards-compliant browser or CSS (or JavaScript) is not enabled in your browser, and the page will not appear as the designer intended. Please visit The Web Standards Project for details and for information about how to upgrade your browser.

 

Festival: Going from table to wine grapes

By Ripley M. Howe
News-Sentinel Business Editor

Surviving countless changes in taste and times, Lodi’s love affair with the grape endures.

“We always had good wine grapes, right from the start,” said Ralph Lea, a Lodi historian.

Even in the early years of California’s growing recognition as a winemaking center, the Napa and Sonoma areas imported as much as half of their wines and grapes from Lodi, he said.

The city’s first celebration of the fruit of the vine saw life in September 1907 as the Tokay Carnival, the community’s harvest celebration. The aim of the carnival, which was sponsored by local businessmen, was to “advertise to the world the beauty and value of the Tokay grape.”

Just the previous year, Lodi had been incorporated as a city, and the community’s business leaders wanted to promote the region and its leading crop, the delicious flame Tokay table grape.

However, despite the success of the first Tokay Carnival, the next year there was neither money nor will to put on the carnival the next year.

There would not be another harvest celebration in Lodi for another 27 years.

In 1920, the U.S. Congress enacted prohibition, making the sale or consumption of alcohol illegal. Although some farmers pulled up their grape vines to plant other crops, Lodi’s grape industry continued to thrive.

Besides growing table grapes, many of Lodi’s vineyards continued to produce grapes to be exclusively used to make sacramental wines for religious observances, which were not banned under Prohibition. Others sold their grapes in bulk to make pharmaceutical grade alcohol.

In 1933, Prohibition was repealed, and the city fathers decided to renew the celebration of the grape harvest, looking forward to prosperous times for both wine and table grapes. On Sept. 7-9, 1934 the first Lodi Grape Festival was held. That year, 5,686 railcar loads of grapes were said to be shipped from Lodi.

In 1956, the federal government officially recognized Lodi as a wine grape growing district — this allowed vintners to label their wine as coming from Lodi.

Both the Grape Festival and the Lodi region’s transition from table grapes to wine grapes really took hold in the mid 1970s, said Mark Chandler, president of the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission.

The primary reason for the decline in the popularity of the flame Tokay grapes was the creation of the “flame seedless” variety of grapes, a new strain that blended the flame Tokay with the Thompson seedless grape.

These red seedless grapes were heavily planted in Southern California, where they prospered in the more temperate climate, and also came to harvest weeks earlier than the original flame Tokays — and they had no seeds.

At the same time, there was nationwide boom in white wine consumption, thus Lodi’s grape growers began planting French columbard and chardonnay grapes to meet the popular demand.

Then in 1979 Lodi native Robert Mondavi bought the land and historic buildings in Acampo which would become the Woodbridge Winery, and in a few short years would become one of the largest table wine labels in the nation.

In 1980, a curious footnote was added to Lodi’s wine making history, one that that some of the area’s premium wine makers might like to forget.

Lodi High graduates Michael M. Crete and R. Stewart Bewley invented the wine cooler, a sweet, sour and intoxicating carbonated beverage made with white wine and citrus fruit. Their “California Cooler” quickly gained national popularity, and in 1984, the pair sold their company to the wine and spirits giant Brown Forman (owners of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, Southern Comfort, Lenox China and Hartman Luggage, among many other businesses) for a cool $55 million.

In 1987, the wine cooler craze peaked, with 122 million gallons sold nationally — but by 1995, that total was down to 18.6 million gallons. The California Cooler, along with hundreds of inferior imitators, fell by the marketing wayside.

Also in the 1980s, the premium wine varietals like cabernet and merlot began to take hold in the area, Chandler said. By the mid-90s, the Lodi appellation had become the leading producer of many varieties of wine grapes, including cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, merlot, sauvignon blanc and zinfandel grapes, said. Approximately 500,000 tons of wine grapes are generated from Lodi’s vineyards each year, he said.

In 1986 the Lodi viticulture area was officially labeled an appellation, which is a protected name that indicates the geographic area where wine grapes are grown.

A wine that contains at least 85 percent grapes grown in the Lodi appellation can formally call itself a Lodi wine.

The designation as an appellation accelerated Lodi wine makers’ push toward the quality wine market, and the Grape Festival followed, with more and more wineries and wine varieties represented each year.

At the height of the flame Tokay production, nearly half of Lodi’s vineyards were dedicated to flame Tokay vines — about 25,000 acres of a total of around 50,000 total vineyard acreage, said Paul Verdegaal, University of California Cooperative Extension Farm adviser.

From that total of 25,000 acres, there may now be less than 1,000 acres in production, he said.

“A lot of vines were pulled out this winter,” Verdegaal said, and was hard pressed to come up with a grower who was still in active production of the venerable table grapes. Even the local fruit stands have gone over to the seedless variety, Verdegaal added.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, peak production reached around four million “lug boxes” of flame Tokays, he said. These were boxes of the best grapes, intended for use as table grapes. Now, while some flame Tokays are still in production, most are used as bulk grapes for use in sparkling wines and brandy, he said.

There is still a small market for the old grapes, and some are shipped to Canada, he said. Now, only about 1,000 lug boxes of flame Tokays are shipped from the Lodi area, he said.

Jerry Fry, director of operations at Mohr-Fry vineyards in Lodi, said they have saved about 30 vines of the old flame Tokays in their 300-acre vineyard, just to keep some of Lodi’s grape-growing history alive.