RAVENSWOOD - Zinfandel Lodi 2018
Ravenswood Winery is located in Sonoma County, in California. In 1976, Joel Peterson founded Ravenswood in partnership with fellow wine lover Reed Foster, a Harvard MBA who handled the viticulture while Joel oversaw the winemaking. In the ensuing years, Joel had dual careers, working nights and weekends in a lab as he built the winery during the daylight hours.
While Ravenswood has no vineyards of its own, it has existing relationships with several grower vineyards around Sonoma (and one in Napa) where it sources its fruit. Each of these has a corresponding single-vineyard wine. Today, Joel works with more than 100 northern California growers who provide grapes for Ravenswood, consulting on irrigation methods, cultivation practices, cropping levels and a slew of other vineyard management issues. This attention in the field, coupled with the fact that Ravenswood is one of the few wineries that has had the philosophical and winemaking skill of one winemaker for over 30 years, contributes to a consistency of quality and style rarely found in California.
Ravenswood takes its name from an incident that happened when the brand began. Joel Peterson bought the grapes and due to a miscommunication with the seller, ended up having to load four tons of already-harvested fruit onto a truck by himself before a storm hit. Peterson was inspired by the ravens who watched him as he loaded the truck. Ravenswood boasts that its logo (a totem of three ravens clasping talons) is one of the most tattooed symbols in the wine industry, and offers free tastings to anyone sporting one.
Grape variety: 100% Zinfandel
