What's newFestival features Van Ruiten wines
John Van Ruiten planted his first vineyard in Lodi more than 50 years ago. That field of zinfandel vines still exists today, but the surrounding landscape is quite different.
Van Ruiten Family Vineyards has been making wine since 2000. (Amy
Weddell/News-Sentinel)
Once known strictly as a grape growing district, Lodi has become a world-class winemaking region during the past few decades. Country roads that before featured only small homes and large vineyards are now home to large wineries and intimate tasting rooms, where people can come to sample local wines.
The Van Ruiten family, like Lodi, has looked beyond the vineyard with much success. Five years ago, after more than five decades of growing grapes, the family decided to begin using their fruit to make their own wine label.
Van Ruiten Family Winery today markets a dozen varieties in 20 states across the country and has won numerous awards, including a Best of Class gold medal at the recent San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition for its 2001 syrah. It is also the first-ever featured winery at this year’s Grape Festival, being held from Sept. 16-19.
“People agree that Van Ruiten is one of the up-and-coming wineries in the area,” said Mark Armstrong, general manager of the Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Fair. “This is a great way to get their wine out to the people.”
John Van Ruiten arrived in Lodi in the 1940s after leaving the Netherlands following World War II. As the acreage of vineyards grew near Highway 12 southwest of the city, so did the family, and by the end of the 20th Century there were three generations of Van Ruitens farming more than 800 acres of winegrapes.
For 50 years, the grapes grown in the Van Ruiten vineyards was harvested and shipped to other wineries every summer. The family wanted to branch out into winemaking, however, and in 1999 the first varieties of Van Ruiten’s wines went into production, said winery and tasting room President Mark Fedorchak.
Sampling freshly harvested grapes from the Van Ruiten Family Vineyards
are Jim Van Ruiten, one of the winery’s owners, left, winemaker Ryan
Leeman and the winery’s president Mark Fedorchak.
(Amy Weddell/News-Sentinel)
The first year featured two varieties: a blend of shiraz and cabernet sauvignon that remains the company’s most popular today, and a chardonnay, Fedorchak said. There wasn’t a lot bottled, and the lack of a winery forced the wine to be crushed off-site, but everyone involved knew they were on to something.
“People liked what they were doing,” Fedorchak said. “It gave them the confidence to build a winery.”
In 2000, less than a year after kicking its first season of winemaking, Van Ruiten opened a state-of-the-art winery off Highway 12. A year after that, a tasting room opened so people could try the winery’s ever-expanding list of varieties: syrah, petit syrah, viognier, sauvignon blanc, late harvest and old vine zinfandels and a cabernet sauvignon.
The winery even made a special rose version of its popular cab-shiraz blend for the Grape Festival, Fedorchak said. With another hot September expected this year, festival-goers will probably be looking for something cool to drink.
“(Considering) the warm weather, we thought a rose would be pretty popular,” he said.
Van Ruiten will have six varieties available at four different booths during the festival, including its old vine zinfandel, cab-shiraz blend and chardonnay.
