Acquiesce: Through the looking glass with Lodi’s White(s) Queen

I hope Sue Tipton forgives (or at least has a chuckle over) the literary reference above.  As I sat down to write this piece, and thought about how to title it, I realized I was as confounded by how to properly describe her and her outstanding wines as I was the first day I tasted them.  And this is a very good thing.

I have a great fascination with–and admiration for–winemakers who trust their vision enough to buck trends and defy norms and expectations.  Sue Tipton, owner and winemaker of Acquiesce Vineyards in Lodi, California, is one of those mavericks, and the resulting wines prove how great her vision is.

The day I visited her tasting room as part of last year’s wine blogger conference, it really was a bit of a through-the-looking-glass experience.  I knew very little about Lodi and its wines, but did know their reputation for producing tens of thousands of acres of red wine grapes, especially Zinfandel.  So, naturally, the first place I’m taken on the Lodi pre-conference excursion is Acquiesce, where you will find a lineup of outstanding Rhône varieties inspired by the wines of Chateauneuf de Pape–and not a single red among them.  (Way to shake things up, LoCA.)

That’s a bold choice for a Lodi winemaker.  Heck, that’s a bold choice generally speaking.

It all started with one sip of wine.

Like almost every winemaker I’ve talked to over the years, Sue began her journey as a winemaker after being wowed by a particularly memorable bottle of wine–in her case, it was an old-world white Rhône blend from Châteauneuf-du-Pape.  She’d never tasted anything like it before, and wanted more.  She began seeking out more of those blends, both old AND new world wines, but that didn’t sate her growing fascination with this style of wine.

So the wheels began to turn–she and her husband Rodney, who is her partner in the winery, had recently moved to Lodi and purchased a home that shared land with 18 acres of Zinfandel vines, which were already under contract to wineries and winemakers, a kind of built-in income source.  Soon, she began dabbling in home winemaking, using some of the Zinfandel grapes from their property to make a dry rosé.  But she couldn’t stop thinking about that white Châteauneuf-du-Pape, so they made the choice eleven years ago to rip out some of those income-producing Zinfandel vines–an anxiety-producing move, to be sure–and planted Grenache and Grenache Blanc (the former of which is used in her bone-dry Grenache Rosé).

It didn’t take long for what had been a hobby pursuit to morph into something more–and they made the decision to go into business.  An old barn on the property was converted into a winery and tasting room, and they began purchasing the larger scale winemaking equipment needed to produce the increased amount of wine they were making.

Choosing to jump into a highly competitive business that’s subject to the vagaries of weather and consumer whims is not a choice made lightly, but it proved to be a very good choice indeed.  Tipton expanded her plantings to include Roussanne, Viognier, and Picpoul Blanc and they opened their tasting room in 2012.  As it would turn out, the demand for her wines exceeded their production every year, and Acquiesce was a bona fide success.

In 2015, she added two more Châteauneuf-du-Pape varieties, Clairette Blanche and Bourbolenc.  Those varieties are rare even for their home turf in southern France, but as we already know, she’s not afraid to move ahead with what others might see as unconventional choices.  She hopes to see her first vintage of Clairette Blanche this year, and I cannot wait to taste what she does with it.

Let the grape speak.

Tipton chooses a minimalist approach to her wines–these beauties never touch oak, which lets the character of these grapes really shine.  Her location in Lodi’s Mokulemne River sub-AVA gives her near-perfect growing conditions with the area’s sandy loam soil and the added benefit of cooler nights thanks to the cool coastal air from the Sacramento-San Joachin River Delta that drifts in every evening.  Combined with the area’s Mediterranean climate, all these conditions come together to allow these varieties to be taken to appropriate ripeness (something that’s a challenge for their Châteauneuf-du-Pape counterparts), and this results in grapes that are bright and crisp with intense fruitiness, and great acidity and minerality.  If any of this surprises you, read all about Lodi’s Mokelumne River soils from LoCA’s Randy Caparoso.

Acquiesce’s very name comes from Tipton’s desire to let these grape varieties’ best qualities shine through:

Acquiesce – verb: to surrender, to become quiet.  Acquiesce has become our mantra — to submit to nature, to yield to the vineyard, to acquiesce to the grapes so they present their own true character.  Attention to detail reigns here with sustainable vines that are lightly watered, grapes that are handpicked and then whole cluster pressed to create wines that are both classic and traditional.

So what about those wines?  They’ve won an impressive number of awards and accolades, and demand for her wines is so great that she had to close her wine club to new memberships for a long stretch.  She reopened the club to new members just two weeks ago, and the response has been so overwhelming that she told me she expects to have to close it again by mid-April.

My personal favorite of hers (although it’s really hard to pick a favorite) is the Picpoul Blanc–this is the wine that stopped me in my tracks when I tasted it last summer.  This variety is known for its sharp, citrus tartness–the name translates roughly to “lip stinger”–and hers is perhaps the best version of this variety I’ve tasted.  Dry, almost mouth-puckeringly tart, but balanced out beautifully with intense fruitiness and great body.  It is a gorgeous wine, and I’m impatiently awaiting her 2016 release of this one.

The entire lineup is impressive, though, and the 2016 Grenache Blanc, Grenache Rosé and Viognier are now available (and if you run REALLY fast, you can pick up one of the few remaining bottles of her 2015 Belle Blanc, a Rhône blend of Grenache Blanc, Viognier and Roussanne).  Still to come this spring are the releases of that stunning Picpoul Blanc, the Roussanne, and the Belle Blanc.

Tipton produced 1400 cases of wine in 2015, and this grew to 2000 cases for the 2016 vintage.  She also has a sparkling Grenache Blanc in the works, méthode champenoise style, which she hopes to release in about a year (I may be excessively excited about this one, because BUBBLES).

Acquiesce is a most unexpected gem to find in the heart of Lodi’s red wine country.  The winery is open for tasting Friday – Sunday from 11 am – 5 pm, and each flight is expertly paired with a small bite, which is a wonderful touch (and a bargain at the $10 tasting fee).  Tasting fee waived with a bottle purchase–but I’ll bet you can’t buy just one.  They even have a Tesla charging station for your convenience.

Acquiesce is located at 22353 N. Tretheway Road Acampo, California 95220, Phone (209) 333-6102.