Macchia ‘the spot’ for big, bold full-bodied red wines
Macchia Wines is a family-owned, family-operated winery.
That means job descriptions don’t apply during harvest. All hands are on deck.
Tanya McMahan has enough on her plate overseeing the wine club and tasting room for the Acampo winery her family started in 2001. But in recent weeks, she’s also been busy in the morning helping bring grapes to the winery, sometimes with her twins in tow.
“I help out during harvest bringing in the grapes for my brother, so on top of doing my office work, I’m out in the truck picking up grapes and bringing in trailers of fruit,” McMahan said. “It makes it interesting, especially since you never know when the grapes are going to be ready and sometimes you find out the day before, and I’ve had to take my twins with me in the truck to drop off trailers at the vineyards.”
Tanya’s mother, Lani Jean, is the owner and runs sales and marketing, and her brother, Jonathan McMahan, has been the head winemaker since 2016 after working as the assistant winemaker from 2002. Tanya said she’s seen her brother grow very quickly into his more consuming role.
“He came and did all the grunt work and learned a lot along the way with my stepdad, who was the winemaker,” she said. “He took a lot of classes at UC Davis. He’s always learning and taking classes to get more education to become a better winemaker. From 2002 to now, he’s a completely different person with the responsibility on his shoulders.”
Tanya said her brother hasn’t had a day off in weeks and likely won’t for several more. That’s life during harvest. But fans of Macchia appreciate the hard work, based on the almost always constant activity in the tasting room, which in 2008 moved from Vino Piazza, now Tuscan Wine Village in Lockeford, to the home where they used to live on Peltier Road, which has been in the family since 1993. Tanya’s current office was her bedroom growing up and the tasting room used to be the living room. All the winemaking is done on site.
Macchia, an Italian word that means “the spot,” is the “spot” for full-bodied red wines made with fruit sourced from some of the best “spots” in the Lodi appellation and Amador County. Macchia is known for big, bold, juicy slap-yourmamma-in-the-mouth wines that are chock full of bright, vibrant fruit flavors and tend to register on the higher side in terms of alcohol by volume.
In fact, a revved-up bottle of Zinfandel is responsible for Macchia’s inventive labeling, where each wine is named with an adjective ending in the letters “ous.”
“That wine was so big but the flavors were so bright that you couldn’t taste the alcohol,” Tanya said. “My parents couldn’t figure out why they could only drink about a glass and a half and they would both fall asleep on the couch.”
The alcohol tested a robust 16.5 percent by volume. They named the wine “Adventurous” because drinking an entire bottle would be an adventure. Subsequent wines were named “Sumptuous,” “Delicious,” “Devious,” “Meticulous,” ... you get the point.
Macchia’s niche is Zinfandel; they make 10 different expressions of the variety, some with singlevineyard designation, such as the Grandpére vineyard in the Shenandoah Valley planted 150 years ago, Mohr-Fry Ranch, the Linsteadt vineyard, Markus Bokisch’s Vista Luna vineyard, the West Wind vineyard, and Noma Ranch, to name several.
“You get to see what the vineyards bring,” said Macchia’s cellar master, Jaime Padilla. “It’s not all the same Zin. You get to see the difference, especially when other wineries are buying the same grape. It’s kind of cool to see what they make with the same grape that we buy.”
Said Tanya: “If you come to Lodi and ask for Zinfandel, most of the time people will say you have to check out Macchia. They’re very fullbodied. We say our wines are not for the faint of heart.”
Macchia also crafts Italian varieties: Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, Barbera and Teroldego; the Spanish variety Graciano and other reds: Primitivo and Petite Sirah, as well as Port, a white blend and a rosé. Tanya said more varieties might come on line in the future, such as Alicante Bouschet and Cabernet Sauvignon.
“We like to be able to mingle the really nice sort of big, bold Tuscan style Italians with our big, bold, California-style Zins,” she said.
For mouth-filling Zinfandels and other big, bold wines, Macchia is the spot.