November '12 Central Valley Pit Stop - Klinker Brick

I'm regularly listen to the 3 Wine Guys podcast, and time and time again they mention Klinker Brink, and speak of the Zins - especially the "Old Ghost" - with reverence.  So when we decided to stop at a winery in Lodi on our way back down to SoCal, it seemed like a good opportunity to visit.

Klinker Brick Winery ($5 tasting, wines $15-$37)
'11 Rosé (Syrah/Grenache/Carignane/Mourvedre/Zinfandel), '10 Sangiovese - Amador, '10 Old Vine Zinfandel, '10 "Old Ghost" Old Vine Zinfandel, "Bricks and Mortar" Red Blend (Cabernet Sauvignon/Petit Sirah/Zinfandel), '10 "Farrah" Syrah, '05 "Gold Brick" Late Harvest Zinfandel

Our visit was on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so the tasting room was busy, but there was still plenty of space at the bar. The tasting room was spacious with plenty handcrafted goods to sell. The staff generally kept on tops of things, but didn't seem all that knowledgeable about wine culture. At the end of my tasting, I asked to revisit the Rosé - and asked if I could swish out the remaining red wine with a small splash of the Rosé, but the staff person thought that was crazy and swished out with water instead. So was I got was a watery Rosé for the second tasting.
The Rosé was a fun blend of a variety of grapes, slightly sticky, but with a nice vegital note. The Zins are their bread and butter. All were jammy, were about 15.5% alcohol per volume, and were made to be appealing to a wide cross-section of wine drinkers. The quality and the flavors improved from the baseline - Old Vine, the mid-level Marisa Vineyard, and the Old Ghost - their premiere. The Old Ghost wasn't a wine that I'd pay $37 for, but it was a fun drink - also kind of neat to enjoy grapes from a 101 year old vineyard.  The Bricks and Mortar is a new blend for the winery. Another jammy fella, sweet and zippy. The Syrah was a funny wine. It had huge flavor on the front-end which gave way to a much more quiet back-end. I'm thinking that the winemaker recognized that it was too full-flavored and quieted out the wine so it would be more friendly. The Late Harvest Zin was a totally wacky finish to the tasting. Sweet chewy smoke with overt bacon notes. It was fun to sip, but I don't think that it would something that I'd want to drink much more than that.
Experience: B- / Wines: B-

The folks at Klinker Brick seem to know what they are doing. They make real wine that people want to buy. It's not stuff that's in my sweet spot, but I enjoyed it well enough - and definitely respect their business acumen. Since it's only the second winery that I've visited in the Lodi area, I don't yet have a feel for how it stacks up to other places - but my guess is that it's one of the better ones.