WINEMAKER SHARES TASTE OF HIS FAVORITE LODI DIVERSIONS.
Todd Ziemann’s family owned vineyards while he was growing up, but it took a while for the fourth-generation Lodi native to catch the winemaking bug. Now the director of winemaking for Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi, he recalls that his initial experiences with viticulture were not exactly enthralling.
“I really didn’t have a lot to do with that, other than when it came to be pruning time, I always got dragged out there in the freezing cold,” says Ziemann, 53. “I didn’t really enjoy that.”
As a high school student, he still didn’t know what he wanted to do for a career when he “kind of got lucky” by volunteering for a day at a local cooperative winery. “That’s where it really sunk in that this is what I would like to do — I liked the balance of artistic creation and scientific orientation,” says Ziemann, who went on to earn a degree in fermentation science at UC Davis.
After spending a couple years at wineries on the Central Coast and in Sonoma, he returned to his hometown in 1988 to join Sebastiani Family Vineyards. In 2005 Ziemann began working for Robert Mondavi, a fellow Lodi native who established the Woodbridge winery in 1979 after winning renown in Napa Valley. Ziemann’s wife, Kerry Wald-Ziemann, had also worked as a winemaker with Mondavi at Woodbridge before leaving in 2001 to help raise the couple’s two sons, now 22 and 21.
Mondavi, who died in 2008, “had a big input on the growing of grapes and the technology, and he really did put Lodi and the appellation on the map,” Ziemann says. “His idea of making great wine for everyday occasions, or having wine every day with family and friends — that really resonated with me. My passion is for making great wines in this area, and I love the quality that comes up out of this area.” Naturally, Ziemann suggests visitors to Lodi first head to Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi’s tasting room, proudly noting that some 18,000 a year do. The tasting room, which he calls a “winemaker’s playground,” offers wine from more than 20 different lots, including “emerging varietals” such as Barbera, Vermentino and Tannat, and Ziemann’s current favorite, the Bordeaux-style Section 29 Red Blend.
“It’s just my passion,” he says.