Lodi's King of Portuguese Grapes

When tasting the 2009 Alta Mesa Lodi Verdelho in San Francisco last year, Andrea Immer Robinson (a master of wine and author of multiple wine books) could not stop talking about the "silky dryness and perky tartness" of this uniquely scented dry and bracing white wine— think lime, lemon verbena, and white peach skin. Robinson also noted flavors of "marzipan and almonds in the finish as you exhale," adding that "it makes you crave a Barcelona-style spinach salad, laden with pine nuts and raisins."

Who wouldn't want some of that? But what is Verdelho, and why are we talking about it? In her Guide to Wine Grapes, Jancis Robinson MW writes that Verdelho is "most closely associated with the fortified wines of Madeira," although it has done "notably well in hotter regions of Western Australia." She'll have to revise that book, of course, to mention winegrower Ron Silva's magnificent obsession with the grape in Lodi.

"I was inspired to plant Verdelho," says Mr. Silva, also the proprietor of the boutique-sized Alta Mesa Cellars, "after visiting Ilha do Pico (the "island of Pico") in the Portuguese Azores in 1997. I was in Pico to see where my grandfather was born, and came across a sign that said Zone of the Verdelho. There I found plantings of an indigenous clone of the Verdelho grape, planted in fields surrounded by a rat's maze of black volcanic walls, built everywhere on the island to protect the vines, and fig trees, from the winds whipped up by the Atlantic Ocean."

At that time, Silva was just beginning to expand his vineyard in Lodi's Alta Mesa AVA, located just east of Highway 99 between Galt and Elk Grove. "It was quite a chore," says Silva, "because there's only about 27 inches of loose, gravelly topsoil in Alta Mesa, and after that you hit about 9 inches of hard-packed sandstone. But beneath that was some beautiful, blonde colored loamy soil that hadn't seen the light of day in over a million years, along with lots of extremely pure groundwater. So we had to rip through the sandstone layer 7 feet down to get to it. But just look at the vines and you can see why it was worth the trouble - they're growing beautifully, and have produced some outrageously good fruit."

Altogether Silva's Silvaspoons Vineyards (named by his wife Kat, because just about everything Ron touches seems to turn out well) totals 300 acres; twelve of those acres devoted to Verdelho, plus twenty other grapes such as Zinfandel and Petite Sirah (Michael David-Winery is a big buyer); the rarely seen Torrontés (closely associated with Chile, but producing absolutely luscious, spicy, musk scented grapes in Silvaspoons); and a full complement of black-skinned grapes that originated in Portugal's Douro River Valley, which Silva likes to sell as field mixes to winery clients producing sweet, fortified Port style reds (varieties like Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa, and Tinto Cão).

While Zinfandel and Petite Sirah pay the bills, it's the Portuguese grapes that are nearest to Ron and Kat's hearts because of their heritage. "My grandfather came to California in the first wave of Portuguese immigrants just after 1910," says Ron. "Although my dad grew up in Hayward, he didn't learn how to speak English until he got to grammar school. My wife's family first went from Portugal to Maui, which is where she was born, and we met in San Leandro, after their sugar cane contracts in Hawaii were up."

"When you stand in Silvaspoons, you can see what brought us here 36 years ago - the same reasons why many Portuguese families came to Galt before us, primarily to raise dairy cattle." Silva still keeps about 300 head of beef, which furnishes excellent compost to compliment their Lodi Rules-certified, sustainable farming. Continues Silva, "Alta Mesa is virtually identical to Alentejo, east of Lisbon - the same gravelly soil and Mediterranean weather, the same dry summers and cold winters, and cool breezes at the end of each day, ours coming off the Delta rather than the Atlantic."

At sunset we sit on the shaded concrete crush pad alongside Silva's tiny winery, as unostentatious as the man himself, and gaze westward at a golden horizon from where a late afternoon breeze has begun to cool our skins.

Silva opens a bottle of his 2008 Alta Mesa Lodi Tannat; the Tannat is a Southern French grape notorious for its black color and relentless tannins. Silva's Tannat is suitably dark and impenetrable, and the nose is jam-packed with sweet, luscious blueberry & boysenberryish fruit, with undertones of thick, beefy consommé. On the palate, the wine is dense, tight as a banker's fist, with exotic, rambunctious flavors.

The hefty red wine makes our thoughts turn carnivorous; a hunger for smoky barbecued beef short ribs, or else extremely rare prime rib slathered in raw, tingling horseradish. "You'll have to come back for a full blown Portuguesestyle dinner," says Silva. With that, he sits back, cradling his glass, with wine stained lips forming into a visibly contented smile beneath a wild, wintry gray beard.

Randy Caparoso is the multi-award winning sommelier/restaurateur and longtime wine journalist who also pens the blog for the Lodi Winegrape Commission's.

For more information and over two hundred Lodi wines, visit the Lodi Wine and Visitor Center, 2545 W. Turner Rd., Lodi, (209) 367-4727, www.lodiwine.com