After exhaustive months of searching and discovering that there are very few available warehouses around Lodi, we have finally found a space that will serve as the new home for Markus Wine Co.!
The warehouse is located at the base of the region that has become known as the “Victor Triangle” along the already-famous Highway 12 linking together Sonoma, Napa, Lodi and the Sierra Foothills.
This renowned area contains Mokelumne Glen Vineyards (source of our German whites), Bokisch Vineyard’s Las Cerezas Vineyard, and has long been home to many important vineyards planted in the early 1900’s, such as Bedrock Wine Co.’s Katushas’ Vineyard, Tegan Passalacqua’s Kirschenmann Vineyard, Harney Lane Winery’s Lizzy James Vineyard, Schmiedt Ranch and McCay Cellars’ Lot 13 Vineyard.
We will be right in the center of our most important Lodi vineyard sources.
Over the next few months, we’ll be working on establishing permits, installing cooling units, and customizing the warehouse and office space. Once that is done, we’ll move the empty tanks from Borra, then bring over all the barrels holding the next two vintages of Markus wines. This will be many, many careful truckloads!
Winemaking
On top of all this, in January, we put our second vintage of dry Zeal Rosé into bottle – a blend of 64% Syrah and 36% old vine Carignane from last year’s 2017 vintage. It’s already tasting very nice, with watermelon, strawberry and citrus flavors balanced by minerality and good acidity.
We also bottled a 2017 Riesling (11.6% alc. 36 g/L RS) and we will bottle a 2017 French Colombard (8.6% alc. 50 g/L RS) next month, both from Mendocino, as shiners (no labels) for other wineries.
According to Markus, “They taste great. They are extremely light and refreshing, slightly sweet, but with good balance, perfectly suitable to drink by themselves.” (We still have some available, so contact us using the form way below if you are a winery or private-label retailer that is interested.)
In April, we will also bottle our 2016 Blue Zinfandel and 2016 Domo Carignane, along with Lodi Vermentino, Chardonnay, and Petite Sirah as shiners to sell to wineries (still some available). So, we are pretty busy getting ready to filter and prep the wine right now.
Borra Winery and Wines
For years now, the Borra family has been very supportive of spinning Markus Wine Co. off as its own entity. To get us started, very generously they are helping us literally take the existing winery with us.
The Borra winery building itself will become new offices for the Borra’s very successful and rapidly-growing family business, Lodi Irrigation. You really can’t plant a new vineyard anywhere without drip irrigation nowadays, considering climate change and the increased chance of drought, and Lodi Irrigation has become the go-to supplier for vineyards across all of California, the United States, and as far as Israel.
This is a good time to point out that the number of days to purchase Borra wines is dwindling.
The current vintages are aging nicely, and the reds, in particular, allow you to get a sense of how Markus’s winemaking style has progressively become established. You’ll find the style of the Borra and Markus reds to be similar. If you liked the Borra reds, you’ll like the Markus reds.
You can still order the Borra wines here until our own permits are issued:
ORDER BORRA WINESNew Tasting Room?
Many of you are asking about a new tasting room, since the Borra tasting room has been closed and converted into a conference room.
All we can really say is that, for now, we are completely focused on preparing for the 2018 crush, then getting all those new wines in tank and barrels. Once crush is wrapped up, we’ll put more thought into where we might put a tasting room. We admit we suffer from being perfectionists. When we do something, we like to make it excellent.
But we do want to find a way to make our wines more easily accessible for all our die-hard fans. We will, at the least, put up a “Where to Taste and Buy” page on this website at some point to let you know the best places.
Always feel free to contact us via our main contact form or give us a call on our new winery phone number 209-437-3859.
Thank you for staying in touch and joining us for our exciting journey!
– Jon Bjork
P.S. And if you really want to help support our efforts, the best way to help is to buy (and drink!) our wines.
ORDER MARKUS WINESWinery/Retailer Inquiry Form