And so begins the 9th Annual Wine Bloggers Conference in Lodi, California. Three hundred wine bloggers will converge on the town of Lodi from Thursday to Sunday, August 11 to 14. Janelle and I are here a day ahead to attend a pre-conference in Amador County wine country. Our home base is the Hampton Suites in Lodi.
To get the wine and food festivities going, we stopped in at one of Lodi’s finest dining choices. It is the Dancing Fox Winery, Brewery, Bakery and Restaurant. Put this spot on your list of ‘must’ places to visit when you are in Lodi.
Four of life’s great pleasures all in one spot! That is what the Dancing Fox is all about. Greg and Colleen Lewis are the proprietors of this fun establishment. Gregg is the winemaker and vineyard grower. Gregg has about 110 acres of vineyards in Lodi. Most of those acres are sourced to other wineries and Gregg keeps the best for his Dancing Fox label. There is a tasting room in the back of the restaurant, and tasting is complimentary if you dine at the Dancing Fox.
The Lewis Sons have recently added the brew pub to the Dancing Fox. The Lewis boys have turned a beer-making hobby into a boutique brew pub. Plans call for all the beer to be made in the restaurant, with a showy brew pub in one of the restaurant’s back rooms. We each had one of their pale ale beers with our lunch.
All the breads served at the restaurant are baked on the premises in the early morning hours. Colleen Lewis is the bread-baking wizard. She bakes all of her bread in a unique brick oven imported from Barcelona. It is called the Jllopis oven after the inventor Juan Llopis. Colleen thinks there is only one other Jllopis oven in Northern California, and that one belongs to the Acme Bread Company in Berkeley, CA. The Jllopis oven, plus the local yeast, is the key to her amazing breads. There is a good choice of pizza dishes on the menu and those are cooked in the Jllopis oven.
We had a terrific lunch on the patio at the Dancing Fox. The service was good, and the sandwiches so tasty with the artisan baked bread. The atmosphere is lively and fun. We highly recommend the Dancing Fox in Lodi.
