St. Amant Winery — Attraction in Lodi

Small family-owned winery in Lodi in an industrial park area (what I call a garage door winery which will make sense when you see the surround area). This is tasting room only, so you aren't going to see any vineyards or take a tour. They do have a barrel room there you can see (restroom is located in that area).

The inside is welcoming, although not "touristy." They do accept walk-ins, which is nice when you don't know exactly when you'll be arriving, but can get a little busy at times. Fortunately, they did allow us to split a tasting (one tasting shared between two people) at the counter (there is also seating available).

The winery focuses on European wines plus CA Zinfandels and offer four different ports. I chose the winery mostly because I was interested in ports, but they only have one port on the tasting menu. (They have 2 ruby, 1 tawney, and 1 white port available to buy.)

The tasting was very extensive, especially at the price. We got to try six different wines that were on the tasting menu plus a bonus from a bottle that was open. They even asked if we wanted to try anything again before leaving. It was a great selection of wine (and yes, the port was my favorite).

Overall, this is a great place to go for a tasting experience. The wines were fun to try, and Lodi is great for a day trip out of the Sacramento area without going all the way down to...

We went to the winery yesterday and ran into Barbara Spencer (maiden name St Amant !!!! WOW). We had a great conversation with her while her son Stewart was transferring brand new Tempranillo from fermentation tank to holding tank and gave us a sample from the filter, YUMMY. Found out they were bottling today and Barbara invited us to come watch. We showed up about 9 am and they were in full production. Harry is the owner of Mobile Wineline, which is a complete wine bottling assembly line housed inside a semi-truck trailer. Let me tell you, this rig is AMAZING. New boxes of bottles go in one side of the back, they are dumped out by hand into a hopper and this super cool mobile assembly line picks them up, fills them with wine, corks them, puts the foil on them and labels them. Then fast handed workers (ie. employees,friends and family) load them back into boxes and the truck tapes up the case, stamps a product name on it and counts them as they slide down the ramp to the waiting stackers. We stayed a couple of hours while they were bottling, of all things, the new Tempranillo and got a guided tour of their warehouse and it's cool history, from Barbara and her sister Nancy. Can't wait to get some of the new Tempranillo . Definitely the highlight of our...

Ah yes. This is real red wine roots near the original location of the old lodi guild winery. I'm an x grower and wine maker from the coast and their Barbera is chewy, I love it and usually try to get a case when in Lodi. Unfiltered, unfined the real thing. No pretenses. Tartaric acid crystals thrown in the sediment. I'm sooo happy the family continued this tradition after dad passed away. Hardly anyone does this anymore. I'll never forget when I first met him. I had stopped at the town chamber office on the west end of Turner and the lady asked me about my red wine addiction. She took me aside and whispered I should visit the old Red Mountain, Guild winery location just East of 99. MMMMM, makes me crave lasagna and garlic sourdough just thinking of his first Barbera's. It was so...