Lodi is about to get a little more international exposure. Visit Lodi! hosted Ole Troelsø, a food and wine writer from Denmark, as he toured the city and sampled local vintages in early February.

“He was really very gracious, very interested and very excited about our community,” said Nancy Beckman, the CEO and president of the conference and visitors bureau.

Troelsø writes for Børsen, Denmark’s largest financial newspaper. Enjoyed mainly by CEOs, entrepreneurs and investors, Børsen also covers cultural events, travel and other lifestyle news.

Visit Lodi! has been seeing more interest from international writers recently, according to Beckman.

“It really shows that all of the marketing and promotion of Lodi that we’re doing is paying off,” she said.

And she whole-heartedly believes that the articles and features that such visitors write inspire people to come to Lodi.

A few years ago, she said, she led a tour for a couple of travel writers with a European newspaper. Within a week of the article being published, tourists who read the newspaper were calling for information about visiting Lodi, she said. The first group dropped by the visitors center in Downtown Lodi a month later.

So Beckman and the Visit Lodi! team were pleased when Troelsø chose to visit Lodi.

“We were very excited to have him here,” she said.

During his stay, Troelsø visited two local wineries, St. Jorge and Viaggio, where he sampled their wines and heard about their histories.

He also visited cellardoor, where he posted a photo of wines from Bokisch Vineyards to Instagram with the caption, “Some of Lodi’s finest wines. Great spot!”

Troelsø was aware of Lodi’s reputation for Zinfandels and hearty reds, so he wanted to focus on those, Beckman said.

He also enjoyed dinner at Rosewood, she said. Visit Lodi! provided him with an additional list of things to do in Lodi, Beckman said, but she wasn’t sure if he was able to take advantage of them.

Troelsø found Lodi very welcoming and cozy, he told the News-Sentinel via email on Feb. 23.

“(I) liked the idea of a destination with a small and cozy town, with a good selection of restaurants, and especially the communal tasting rooms, making it easy to taste across the wineries,” he said.

The Portuguese varietals at St. Jorge were interesting, he said, and he also enjoyed the Old Vine Zinfandels he sampled.

He plans to write about the city for his readers, and he would like to visit again someday, he said.

Contact reporter Kyla Cathey at kylac@lodinews.com. Read the original article.