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Lodi

Roots, the food history behind Sacramento menus By , checked November 7, 2026 Lodi and San Joaquin farms, map and what’s in season

The vineyard town near the Mokelumne River, where close to twenty tons of grapes decorated the business district for the 1907 Tokay Carnival.

Mission San Jose

In the last three months of 1834, “immediately following passage of the 1834 secularization rules,” 513 new converts were baptized at Mission San Jose, Wilton Rancheria’s Tribal History records, “including 111 Muquelemnes (Lodi region)” and 41 Cosomnes from the Wilton region.

Malaria, brought to California by members of the Hudson’s Bay Company, had reached the interior the year before, and the epidemic of 1833 weakened and killed thousands of Indigenous people in the Central Valley. Baptisms fell to 56 in 1835 and 68 in 1836. Mission San Jose’s population dropped from 1,550 in the summer of 1837 to 589 in 1839, most of it from Miwok people going back home to the Sacramento Valley.

The Cosumnes, where Wilton families hunted, fished and gathered in the early rancheria years, joins the Mokelumne at a corner of today’s Lodi wine district.

“We still remember these First People and continue to tell oral histories about them- Coyote, Grizzly Bear, Lizard, Deer, Eagle, Condor, Falcon, and others.”

Wilton Rancheria

Mokelumne Station

In August 1869 an excursion train from Stockton met the Sacramento train at Galt’s Station, and the Stockton Independent reported the road from Sacramento to the Mokelumne River “in fine condition,” though from the river to Stockton it was “not yet ballasted.” That year, Tinkham wrote in his 1880 history of Stockton, “the railroad company founded the town of Lodi and forever ruined the future of Woodbridge,” two miles to the west.

The stop was called Mokelumne Station. In May 1872 a switch left open on its side track threw a freight train off the rails. A year later a Sacramento paper wrote of “Lodi or Mokelumne Station,” and on March 20, 1874, the state Senate referred an Assembly bill “to change the name of the town of Mokelumne.” In a freight-rate debate the same day, a San Francisco Chamber of Commerce statement put the railroad’s charge from Lodi to Oakland, about 108 miles, at $2 a ton.

By 1880 Lodi was the largest village in San Joaquin County, with stores, hotels and a flour mill, and Mrs. Gertie De Force Cluff had been publishing the Valley Review there since July 20, 1878. The first vines in the county, Tinkham wrote, were planted by Captain Weber in 1850.

In 1888 a Lodi correspondent who signed as “D.” estimated that season’s shipments from the station at not less than 1,800 carloads of watermelons, grown without irrigation and cultivated almost constantly for their first two months.

“The state was developed in the golden age, it prospered in the wheat age, and it will progress in the vine age that is becoming an important product of California.”

Tinkham, A History of Stockton, 1880

Tokays

In 1914 northern San Joaquin County shipped 2,980 cars of grapes east, 2,287 of them from Lodi.

The cars held 870 to 980 crates each, and a car of table grapes was not usually loaded much above the 26,000-pound minimum. The district also crushed 68,204 tons of wine grapes that year, and the Tokay culls and strippings went to the wineries to be made into brandy for fortifying sweet wines.

In 1973 San Joaquin County harvested 188,390 tons of Tokays, crushed 166,000 tons and packed the rest as 1,791,200 fresh packages of 25 pounds.

Lodi’s deep, fine sandy loam lies mostly in a soil series named Tokay, according to the Lodi Winegrape Commission.

The Tokay Carnival

In August 1907 Lodi let the contracts for a permanent Mission-style arch over Pine Street at Sacramento Street. Cary Brothers took the woodwork, Joseph M. Appleton the foundation and masonry, and P. J. Beaty the plaster, plumbing and electric wiring, and the carnival’s treasurer, W. W. Henderson, had nearly $2,000 from forty-six signers. The same article in the Stockton Independent reported the fruit growers’ mass meeting the night before on the Japanese labor question, where little headway was made; the growers would organize permanently and fight the Japanese pickers until they accepted the former wages.

The carnival opened at 10 o’clock on the morning of September 19, 1907, with the crowning of Miss Bertha de Almado, as the San Francisco Call spelled her name, as Queen Zinfandel. Close to twenty tons of grapes went into the decorations, and the principal streets were decorated with the carnival colors, green and red. Governor Gillett spoke to 10,000 people. Lodi’s Japanese residents set up a tea garden for the carnival at a cost of $1,200, and Professor Bioletti of the University of California gave the history of grapes.

“Every street, every arch and the exterior of every building in the business section is a mass of flaming tokay grapes.”

San Francisco Call, September 20, 1907

Growers and Pickers

The first Japanese arrived in Lodi in 1885, according to the Buddhist Church of Lodi, and at the turn of the century the town had about 50 Japanese residents, a few of them women. The Hinode Store at 4 Main Street opened in the early 1890s, and farmers used it as a place to contract for farm labor through its owner, Seijiro “Joe” Masui. By 1910 Lodi’s Japantown was thriving next to the railroad tracks, icehouses and packing sheds, and its businesses served the thousands of seasonal grape pickers who worked the vineyards.

In 1909 the Lodi Sentinel reported that Japanese pickers were asking as much as $1.75 a ton for wine grapes, up from $1.40 to $1.50 the year before, and that Chinese pickers had joined them. The growers’ answer, the paper said, was to bring in workers from India who would pick wine grapes for $1 a ton. In August 1914 Lodi’s usual Japanese population of 300 was expected to reach 1,800 for the harvest, with most of the workers recruited from the river district. They earned $2 a day in Lodi vineyards and $2.50 in the Sacramento district, and Greek and Italian laborers and women grape packers worked the season too. In 1915 H. E. Kleinsorge, who ran a grape shed at Woodbridge, got an I.W.W. letter threatening to destroy the shed unless he stopped employing Japanese labor and hired white workers instead. He said he would keep employing Japanese labor, since he could not get enough white help.

By 1926 the Lodi Association had leased more than 1,000 acres to twenty-nine families, and by 1940 about 800 Japanese residents had created a Nihonmachi. Nikkei farmers leased, sharecropped or owned nearly two thousand acres around Lodi for grapes, vegetables and sugar beets. Sumi Okuramura’s father sold vegetables from a horse and cart on a route from Lodi to Florin. The Buddhist Church of Lodi was organized in April 1929, and the Rev. Seikaku Mizutani served it from November 1939 until the removal in May 1942. On May 19, 1942, a War Relocation Authority photographer at Stockton recorded “People of Japanese ancestry from the Lodi grape-producing district” having their identification numbers and family groups checked as they left the buses. The druggist Sam Ouye closed his shop and went to the Assembly Center at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds that May.

“Lodi is distinct in that the great majority of the Japanese population are Buddhists.”

Buddhist Church of Lodi

1933

On October 3, 1933, the United Press reported, “Somewhat more than 1,000 Lodi citizens took the grape pickers ‘strike’ into their own hands,” acting as vigilantes, and Col. Walter E. Garrison was chief of a body of 150 special deputies. The acting police chief, C. S. Jackson, reported that the vigilantes had restored order against the labor agitators they said had been keeping grape pickers from going to work “at as much as 40 cents an hour.”

On October 6 vigilantes swarmed through the vineyard area in search of a strike picket accused of slaying Matt Beronio, 28, foreman of the Louis Sanguinetti ranch. His death was the first fatality of the strike, and open threats of lynching were heard. Sheriff Harvey Odell deputized 500 citizens, and five hundred striking pickers were rounded up in the city park and held under armed guard.

The next summer the first annual Northern San Joaquin County Grape Festival was set for Lodi on September 7, 8 and 9, 1934, “Celebrating the revival of California’s vast grape and wine industry.”

Zinfandel

In March 1920, the Lodi Sentinel reported, wine-grape contracts in the Lodi district were being written without any kind of prohibition clause, and one grower sold his 40-acre crop of Zinfandels at $62.50 a ton, delivered at the cars. In February 1922 the district’s growers refused $90 a ton for that year’s wine grapes, against a $40 bid a year earlier. Charles Ray, whose father Don Ray had been one of the district’s pioneer grape growers, turned down $90 a ton for his 115 acres of Zinfandels and said he would hold out for $100.

In 1973 San Joaquin County had 22,734 acres of wine varieties and 20,333 of Tokay, and by 1979 the wine acreage had grown to 31,814 while the Tokay stood at 19,556. In 2024 the county’s grapes covered 83,400 acres and brought $319,310,000, the county’s third-ranked commodity.

  1. 19,556Tokay acres, 1979
  2. 31,814wine-variety acres, 1979
  3. 83,400acres of all grapes, 2024

The Lodi viticultural area, in San Joaquin and Sacramento counties, was approved in February 1986. In 2006, according to the Lodi Winegrape Commission, it was divided into seven smaller appellations, one of them the Mokelumne River. Some 600 Lodi growers formed the Lodi-Woodbridge Wine Commission, now the Lodi Winegrape Commission, in 1991, and in 1992 it started a grower education program to cut the amount of pesticides used. That program became the LODI RULES certification in 2005, and more than 68,500 acres in California, Washington and Israel are certified today. The Commission calls Lodi the Zinfandel Capital of the World, with plantings dating back to 1888, and says it grows nearly 40 percent of California’s premium Zinfandel.

“Up until the 1970’s the most common grapes grown were table grapes, specifically the seeded Tokay table grape variety.”

San Joaquin County crop report, 2024

Lodi Now

At Smit Farms, John Smit turned 40 acres of his Linden dairy into Fuji and Gala apples and then, with his sons, into grapes and cherries; the farm grows table grapes. Ferrari Farms, also in Linden, grows grapes and sells at the Lodi Certified Farmers Market, held on School Street downtown on Thursday evenings from May 14 to August 27 in 2026.

The Chinchiolo family grows cherries at Lodi Blooms in Lodi. Visit Lodi dates the family business to 1918, when the Chinchiolo Fruit Company grew grapes, figs, celery, pears and cherries.

Lodi and San Joaquin: the farms SacFM lists

Timeline

  1. 1833 Malaria reaches the interior and kills thousands of Indigenous people in the Central Valley. The first people
  2. Late 1834 Wilton Rancheria counts 111 Muquelemnes “(Lodi region)” among 513 people baptized at Mission San Jose in three months. The first people
  3. 1837 to 1839 Mission San Jose’s population falls from 1,550 to 589 as Miwok people go back home. The first people
  4. 1869 The railroad company founds the town of Lodi, two miles east of Woodbridge. The town
  5. May 1873 A Sacramento paper writes of “Lodi or Mokelumne Station.” The town
  6. March 1874 The Legislature takes up a bill to change the name of the town of Mokelumne. The town
  7. 1888 Some 1,800 carloads of watermelons are shipped from Lodi. The town
  8. August 1907 Contracts are let for the Mission arch over Pine Street. The town · Grapes
  9. September 19, 1907 The Tokay Carnival opens in Lodi. Grapes
  10. 1909 Japanese pickers at Lodi ask as much as $1.75 a ton, up from $1.40 to $1.50 the year before. Grapes
  11. 1914 Northern San Joaquin County ships 2,980 cars of grapes east, 2,287 of them from Lodi. Grapes
  12. February 1922 Lodi growers refuse $90 a ton for their wine grapes. Grapes
  13. April 1929 The Buddhist Church of Lodi is organized. The town
  14. October 1933 More than 1,000 Lodi citizens act as vigilantes in the grape pickers’ strike, and a picket is accused of killing ranch foreman Matt Beronio. The town · Grapes
  15. September 1934 The first annual Northern San Joaquin County Grape Festival is set for Lodi. The town · Grapes
  16. May 1942 At Stockton, officials check the identification numbers of people of Japanese ancestry from the Lodi grape district as they leave the buses. The town
  17. 1973 San Joaquin County has 22,734 acres of wine varieties and 20,333 of Tokay. Grapes
  18. February 1986 The Lodi viticultural area is approved. Grapes
  19. 2005 LODI RULES becomes a formal sustainable certification. Grapes
  20. 2024 Grapes earn San Joaquin County $319,310,000, its third crop by value. Grapes

Where the Food Goes Now

Follow each Lodi-area farm’s food to the Sacramento restaurants and markets that name it.

Pick a farm

Farms in the Lodi and San Joaquin and where their food goes: read it as a list

Sources

Checked November 7, 2026. Quotes from old newspapers keep their spelling, with obvious scanning errors corrected. The grape cluster at the top is the Herbemont, an American grape, from Bush & Son & Meissner’s 1875 grape catalogue.