Published July 9, 2005, in Our Town for the Tracy Press
I have found another Tracy-area resident connected with a winery.
John Thoming, a retired New Jerusalem nut grower, has an interest in Mokelumne Oaks Vintners of Lockeford. As one of the six owners, he was out peddling his wines last month and asked me to sample them.
Five bottles later, I am able to report that there are several “keepers” in the Mokelumne Oaks lineup: the 2001 Carignane, the 2001 Cuvee and the 2002 White Port.
And although I didn’t prefer the 2001 Cab-Shiraz or the 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon, the former earned a silver medal at the 2003 California State Fair Wine Competition, and the latter has been the most popular in sales.
Who is Mokelumne Oaks? It’s a group of five men and a woman who have all tilled the soil in San Joaquin County at one time or another. The business isn’t lucrative enough yet for Manuel Tavares, Dave Pera, Alan Cheney, John Schmidt, Linda Wesson and Thoming to forsake their other jobs.
In fact, Tavares grows the grapes, barrels and blends the wine, and sells it. He’s been in the vineyard his entire adult life, growing grenache, carignane and mission grapes since the 1970s. And he has been dabbling in winemaking in the Portuguese tradition for years with his father as his teacher.
When the wine market became bloated in 2001, Tavares could not find a home for his grapes. Neither could other growers — and they banded together to form Mokelumne Oaks. Fortunately, the 2001 crop in the Lodi area was light, allowing the grapes to have more intense flavors. That’s just what Tavares wanted. “I intentionally left the grapes longer on the vines to increase (the sugars),” he said. “There is a boldness in the taste.”
There also is a balance of oak flavors, which Tavares created by aging his red wines in a combination of one-year-old and two-year-old American and French barrels.
Because of this, the 2001 Carignane has a deep berry flavor and a spicy, mineral finish. Just before the finish, there are hints of licorice. To attain the wine’s complexities, Tavares aged it longer than anticipated, because the taste was unsettling after the first bottling. Perseverance paid off.
The 2001 Cuvee, a bronze medal winner at the 2003 California State Fair, is a mixture of 45 percent carignane (usually a blending grape), 45 percent cabernet sauvignon and 10 percent zinfandel. The berry taste at the front of the palate is more moderate and precedes a complex finish of leather, smoke and chocolate.
That chocolate finish is prominent in the 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon, a rather one-dimensional wine. Chocolate also is part of the wine’s plum aroma. The flavor is of sweet currants.
The 2001 Cab-Shiraz, a 67 percent cabernet sauvignon, 33 percent shiraz blend from Lockeford-grown grapes, is a big blast of snappy red currants. The heavy tannic finish is of dark oak smoke and tar. This wine hasn’t any finesse; it’s a direct hit.
In the Portuguese tradition, Tavares has made a tawny white port from a small crop of Flame Tokay grapes grown in Victor, just east of Lodi. He didn’t handpick the grapes in 2003 until late October and early November to raise their sugar level. Before pressing, he hand-sorted the bunches to select those that hadn’t shriveled up. To fortify the wine, he added 190-proof raisin brandy.
The result is a light port that has a sweet caramel front and an almond finish, with a slight raisin aftertaste. Although it is devoid of a mid-palate taste, the port is very drinkable. Even non-port drinkers will enjoy an after-dinner glass.
Getting the consumer to try Mokelumne Oaks is the job of Thoming and the other five owners. At least one of them is in the wine-tasting room at Vino Piazza in Lockeford every weekend. And slowly, the wines, all priced at $15 a bottle (the port is $17 a bottle), have found their way into area restaurants.
Next step, says Thoming, is to increase production from 3,500 to 5,000 cases, with the release of the 2004 Old Vine Zinfandel and the 2004 Pinot Grigio. That will mean more bottles for Thoming to carry around, and more bottles for wine critics to enjoy.
• Mokelumne Oaks Vintners, 12470 Locke Road, in Lockeford, is open for tasting from noon to 5 p.m. weekends. Call 209-339-3754 or visit www.mokelumneoaksvintners.com.
To reach Jack Eddy about his column, Cheers from the Vineyard, which runs weekly in Our Town, call him at 209-830-4233, fax to 209-835-0655 or send an e-mail to jwe@tracypress.com.
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