What's Up in Lodi?

Satori mining Gold, Silver and ... Platinum?

Wine Competition. The 7th Annual Consumer Wine Awards were held March 17 and 18 in Lodi (the land of Old Vine Zin) ... and Satori had entered two Zins and a Syrah.

A New Wrinkle. But this is no traditional wine competition. The judges are not professional wine tasters; they are just wine lovers who enjoy drinking wine. For the fifth year in a row, a panel of approximately 60 consumers, monitored by six wine experts, collaborated to evaluate more than 600 wines from many of California's largest and most popular wineries in a blind taste test.

Oh, Lord, Sipping in Lodi again.  "What's unique about this competition is that the winners represent the opinions of actual wine consumers, not 'experts' whose palates, experience and focus may not agree with the consumer at all," says Harvey Posert, spokesperson for the Consumer Wine Awards competition. 

According to Tim Hanni, one of the industry leaders in sensory sciences, "Trained wine experts brains are scrambled. They are wired to recognize and evaluate certain characteristics of a wine, and sometimes forget to determine if it simply tastes good." 

Another New Wrinkle. The competition actually divides the tasters -- after they have taken a rigorous preferences survey -- into four categories of wine drinkers. The idea is that every person has unique physiological and sensory differences that profoundly affect their wine and food preferences. The Lodi tasters who evaluate the wines in each category are the very consumers who are most inclined to buy and enjoy the wines of that category.

So how did we do in The Land of Old Vine Zin? Our 2009 Estate Zen-Zin (100% Primitivo) won the highest medal at the competition -- Platinum (94 points)! The 2009 Estate Oh-So Zin, Gambit's Blend (a blend of 4 different zinfandel clones) won a Silver medal. And the 2009 Estate Ta-Da Syrah (the first time T. has ever entered a Satori syrah into a competition) took home a Gold medal. Not bad for a humble winery from the Santa Clara Valley ("Oh, Lord, stuck in Gilroy again"). 

Today Lodi ... tomorrow the World.

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