Italian tradition bears fruit in Lodi
Lodi’s Lucas Winery turns to the sun to make dessert wine
LODI — A whiff of fermenting grapes surrounds Lucas Winery on a recent Wednesday afternoon.
Behind the tasting room and under the clear blue sky, visitors are greeted with an unusual sight: Stretching down a long dirt path between rows of 80-year-old, organically farmed Zinfandel vines, and spread out in neat rows near the shaded sitting area, are two tons of Zinfandel grapes, which are slowly being warmed in the sun’s rays.
Two men, dressed in wide-brimmed hats and long-sleeved shirts, kneel on soft pads while methodically turning one grape cluster at a time. They pick them up, inspect them briefly, periodically tossing one into the adjacent fall-colored vineyard.
It’s a time-consuming process, but the final product will be a delicate, rare, sweet dessert wine.
Lucas Winery owner and winemaker David Lucas said his wife, co-owner and fellow winemaker Heather Pyle Lucas, was introduced to the oldworld European winemaking method during a consulting trip to Italy. She was working with the Frescobaldi family, a well known Italian winemaking family in Tuscany, and they showed her their traditional way of making Pomino Vinsanto.
Vinsanto is Italian for “wine of the saints,” said Lucas, or “holy wine.”
The Italians use white grape varieties instead of Lucas’ red Zinfandel grapes, he said.
“Way back when, they had to figure out how to be truly sustainable,” he said of the process.
According to Lucas, they would find ways to prolong the life of the food by treating it in
different manners, including drying and fermenting.
After being introduced to the technique, Lucas started experimenting on his own.
”I would just leave grapes hanging out in a section of vineyard, but by doing that they just took longer to ripen. Most of time they didn’t get picked until Thanksgiving,” he said.
So Lucas decided a better way would be to spread them out on large sheets on the ground, and let the sun ripen
them. Every three days the grapes would be gently turned and inspected.
The sun-drying process takes two to three weeks, he said, depending on Mother Nature. Lucas looks for two different signs the grapes are ready for the next step in the process.
“The stems turn very brown and get brittle, and we’re looking for a dimpling in the grape,” he said. It’s a fine balancing act. “I don’t want raisins. It’s a really interesting process, you have to be really invested in it.”
After the grapes have reached the desired drying stage, they are processed and transferred to barrels, where they will remain for three years while fermenting. During the first year most of the fermenting is done and most of the yeast dies off, and after that two more years of more gentle processing remains.
The sugar content starts at about 35 to 40 percent before leveling out at 8 to 10 percent. During the last two years the
alcohol level changes maybe a half percent per year.
“The yeast starts munching on the sugar, and the alcohol level keeps getting higher. Eventually it gets high enough that they pass out," Lucas said with a laugh. “You end up with a high alcohol level, 16 percent up to 17.5, with a balancing sugar of 8 to 10 percent. The high sugar masks the high alcohol level. It makes really good, sweet, dessert wine.”
At the final stage, the “dust” settles, and the clean wine is pulled off the top. It is then ready for bottling.
The sweet dessert wine is best enjoyed with brownies, or cheese, Lucas suggests.
“Enjoy it the way you would enjoy a port. If you’ve cooked your heart out for your guests, and you just want to sit down and enjoy it …”
Lucas takes his cues from the people who came up with the process, as far as how to enjoy wine and food together.
“I think the Italians have it pretty well figured out.”