California

It is remarkable that an industry essentially less than a half-century old could capture the attention of the American wine-buying public to the degree that California has. Powerful consumer interest in California wine is driven by two major factors. The more obvious reason is that California's best wines, which come from grapes grown in a benign climate featuring endless sunshine, very warm summer days, and generally dry harvests, and wonderfully fruity, full, and satisfying, and rarely too austere or tannic to be enjoyed from day one.

California is blessed with an extraordinary range of soils and microclimates, allowing for the successful cultivation of many varieties. In at least three out of four years, the best sites produce healthy, ripe fruits that are the envy of European producers in more marginal climates. The other reason Americans buy so much California wine is that California is the home team. Clearly, a high percentage of domestic wine drinkers are more comfortable buying American wines (and not just wines of California) than imports. Then, too, foreign bottles are generally identified by place name, rather than by the more familiar varieties that American wine drinkers have come to know and enjoy.

Moreover, in much of North America, outside the top 15 or 20 largest metropolitan markets, consumers have limited access to imported wines even if they wanted to buy them. The American consumer's hesitance, or inability, to purchase imported wines that can provide drinking pleasure at considerably lower cost is also one of the driving factors behind the high price of California wines. If more wine drinkers were willing and able to try other wines from around the world--not just from France, Italy, and Spain but from Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and South America--California wine prices for all but the most hotly pursued collectible wines might well be lower than they are today.

Compared to many other countries, the U.S. is not protectionist when it comes to taxing imported wines, but the California wine industry is certainly protected by the natural reluctance of consumers to try wines completely alien to them. For many, Napa Valley is California wine, and Cabernet is king in Napa Valley. Meanwhile, the Burgundy varieties Chardonnay and Pinot Noir have gravitated to cooler areas, generally closer to the Pacific, such as the western stretches of Sonoma County, the Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, and the Santa Maria and Santa Ynez valleys within Santa Barbara County. Syrah vines have yielded interesting wines in a range of styles all over the state, in regions as disparate as Mendocino County, the Sonoma coast, Carneros, Paso Robles, and Santa Maria Valley. Very good Zinfandel similarly comes from multiple growing areas, although to date the age-of-vines variable has been almost as important as geography. Zinfandel, though its roots are in Europe, is a true California original and the only California wine imitated abroad. It's also a variety of which there are still significant plantings of very old vines, in some cases dating back to the end of the 19th century.

Today, it is frequently the darkest, richest, and most flamboyantly ripe California wines that attract the highest point scores from influential critics and the buying interest of consumers. While the best-balanced of these supersized bottlings are among California's most impressive wines, those with dangerously low acidity, very high alcohol levels, and raisined fruit may be best suited for rapid consumption before their fruit fades.

According to Wine Business Monthly, the average alcohol level of California wine rose from 12.5 percent in 1971 to 14.8 percent in 2001--and in 2002, 2003, and 2004 vintages were hotter still. Many factors account for this rise, including healthier vines that ripen their fruit earlier, new trellising methods that expose the grapes to more sun, the widespread use of modern yeast strains that are more efficient at converting grapes sugars to alcohol, and a success if all driving producers to vinify everriper fruit has been the apparent taste preferences of a new generation of wine drinkers, many of whom appear unwilling to accept red wines with any "green" elements (such as fresh herbs, mint, olive, tobacco leaf), even though these green elements are often precursors of their fruit hang on the vine in an attempt to banish any hints or underripeness are simply replacing green tastes with brown tastes--or raisins, prunes, and other dried fruits--and may be comprimising the likely aging curve of their wines in the process.

Today's most collectible California wines--not just Cabernets but also Merlots, Syrahs, and even Pinot Noirs--frequently have alcohol levels in the 15 percent + range and dangerously low levels of acidity. But only those California wines from the top sites, and from low yields, carefully extracted from perfectly ripe fruit with dried berries, are likely to enjoy an extended positive evolution in bottle. With 2002, 2003, and 2004 vintages, more of the north coast's big red wines that ever before show distinctly roasted, port-like aromas and flavors. As impressive as many of these extreme California wines are, however, they can be difficult to drink. Owing to their low acidity, they are less capable of cleansing and refreshing the palate. They may be more appropriate as food substitutes than paired with a meal, unless you happen to be serving rare brontosaurus steak.

In the dynamic California wine industry, many of the leaders from the 1970s and 1980s have fallen off the radar screens of most serious enophiles, as the attention of consumers has shifted to a new generation of talented young California wine makers. Most of the new generation make small but growing quantities of wine from purchased fruit and do not own their own vines. They tend to specialize in just one or two varieties (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; Rhone Valley varieties; Cabernet Sauvignon) and offer a number of vineyard-designated wines in very limited quantities--in many instances, as little as 100 to 200 cases of a particular item. Pricing for these wines is often steep, but many of these newcomers begin with reasonable prices to establish their brands in the marketplace. Meanwhile, many large, older wineries struggle to sell their wines, which are increasingly viewed by critics and consumers as generic and interchangeable.

It is often said that there are two kinds of California wines: the ones that collect dust on retailers' shelves. While this is an overstatement, the fact remains that many of California's most in-demand wines are sold partly or even largely via mailing lists. The advantage of mailing-list sales to producers is obvious: they get the full retail price for their wines, rather than the wholesale price they would receive on bottles sold through regular trade channels. Today, there are so many consumers chasing so few wines--and so few bottles of those wines--prices continue to defy gravity.

Note that most of the small, high-quality California wine producers, who often work with fruit from California's best vineyards, are hard to get your hands on. But in all the commotion over these rare objects of desire, it is easy to forget that larger, established wineries also make commercial quantities of excellent wine, and that these bottles can be found on retail shelves.