October is here and I’m far from being finished with harvest. We started in the middle of August when our Pinot Gris got ripe. Beside that one, I’ve done two more batches of white wine, a rosé and four batches of red. As of this writing, Petite Sirah, Block 14 Zin, Malbec and Petit Verdot are still on the vine. To make matters worse, the weather has cooled considerably, and cloudy skies are ditching my hopes for an early finish.

For this fall’s Wine Club Release, our selection committee has chosen three single variety wines. The six wine line-up included the ’21 Sangiovese, 21 Petite Blend, 21 Malbec, 20 Cab Franc, 22 Mourvedre and 21 Petit Verdot. All showed very well and the feedback from the committee was that narrowing it down to just three wines was very difficult. Their choices were as follows:

The two things I personally like about this wine are the rich, inky depth of color and the perception of sweetness I get in the bouquet. In a normal year, here in Lodi, California, we can bring out the ripe flavors in almost any grape because of our long growing season, our hot summer days and cool summer nights. Petit Verdot is a perfect example of this. Lodi’s Petit Verdot wines burst with dark fruit flavors like ripe plums and black berries and a hint of herbaceousness. This is a great wine right now, but if you are so inclined, go ahead and lay it down for a couple of years for additional smoothness.

As a side note, I want to add that because I typically keep this wine in the barrel for an extra year, when bottling time comes around, the Petit Verdot wine we bottle in any given year is a year older than all the other reds. Hence, in 2024, I had on hand the labels for both the 2021 and the 2022 Petit Verdot, and in the rush of getting the job done, I grabbed the wrong set of labels. So while the label says this wine is from the 2022 vintage, the little label on the back indicates that it is actually the 2021 vintage. My apologies for the confusion.