Lodi’s spring Grape Festival is your yearly opportunity to taste the latest handcraft releases grown in America’s largest winegrowing region

Inside the historic, barrel-shaped Ole Mettler Grape Pavilion at the Lodi Grape Festival.

Each spring since 1980, the Lodi Grape Festival has been holding an early April wine festival on its fairgrounds. It is always the Lodi region‘s first large wine tasting event of the year.

This year, the 2024 Lodi Wine Festival takes place this coming Saturday, April 6. As always, it is held in the historic Ole Mettler Grape Pavilion, a ribbed wooden showroom built in 1949 that makes you think you’re in the inside of a gigantic wine barrel. Very Germanic… very “Lodi!”

The recent bud break in Lodi’s fabled old vine vineyards.

Spring, as you probably noticed, has definitely sprung in California wine country. Heavy rains have subsided, and this year Mother Nature is promising a bright and clear weekend with highs in an exceedingly pleasant low 60°s.

This is also the time of year when local winemakers are just itching to show off their latest wines, many of them bottled just over the past two or three months. The 2024 Lodi Wine Festival will feature the latest releases of no less than 40 wineries (about half of Lodi’s existing bonds), showing over 200 different wines. 

Panels from the expansive mural painted by John Garth (1960) depicting Spring, Summer and Autumn in Lodi wine country, on the walls of the Lodi Grape Festival’s Ole Mettler Grape Pavilion.

The Lodi appellation, in case you haven’t noticed, is also becoming better and better known