Oak Ridge Winery

For five generations the Maggio family have grown grapes in Lodi, supplying fruit to leading California winemakers. In 2002 they began making wine themselves from the same estate vineyards they had sold from for decades.

Lodi sits inland in the Central Valley, east of San Francisco Bay, and its reputation has changed completely in recent years. It was long dismissed as bulk wine country, but the delta breeze that draws cool air in from the bay each afternoon gives a bigger day-to-night temperature swing than Napa, and the region holds some of the oldest Zinfandel vines in the world, many planted before 1900 on their own ungrafted roots in deep sand.

Lodi now produces around 40 per cent of California's Zinfandel. Oak Ridge farm sustainably and are an associate member of the Lodi Rules programme, the first sustainable viticulture certification in the United States.