When we moved our winery to Lodi in 1996, our own vineyard was dying of phylloxera, and we had no grapes to make wine. My father worked out a deal with the Lodi Winegrape Commission – if a grower brought us 2 tons of grapes, we would make the wine, and give them 25 cases, and keep the balance for ourselves. At this point in time, there were only a handful of Lodi wineries, and very few “Lodi” labeled wines in the market. The vast majority of Lodi grapes were being blended away in big tanks at large wineries, and growers really had no sense of how the wine from their vineyards tasted.
Jerry Fry showed up with 7 tons of beautiful Old Vine Zinfandel grapes. My father didn’t know what to do. We didn’t have the money to pay for the grapes, and we had no idea how the wine would turn out. Jerry told him not to worry about it, that we would work it out later. We ended up bottling 450 cases of that first vintage. It won a bunch of awards, sold out quickly, and has since grown to be our most popular wine. Building off the success of Mohr-Fry Zin, we've continued to explore the forgotten, "Heritage" varieties of Lodi adding a number of lesser known grapes and crafting blends to capture the traditional winemaking approaches in early Lodi.