Bear with me please as I ramble on a bit about California wine, market conditions and learning by doing.
Newsweek belatedly catches up to the California wine industry's "good news for consumers, bad news for growers" story under the puckish title, "The Wrath of Grapes." The sad tale of the De Loach winery - which I highlighted previously here -- gets a mention. [Patriotic/conservative blog readers will reel in horror at the photo caption in the Newsweek piece: "Michael De Loach sold his vineyard to the French." The actual lesson of the article is not Francophobic: it's that you had best keep your eye on those clever Australians.]
There is one peculiar observation in the middle of the story, when the troubles at De Loach are blamed on a too speedy expansion of production:
Growers like De Loach Vineyards in Santa Rosa, Calif., for example, boosted production from 90,000 cases in 1995 to more than 250,000 cases by the end of the decade, expanding into such non-native varietals as pinot grigio and syrah, and selling not only to restaurants but chain supermarkets and hotels.
Tut, tut, now. Let's get this straight, Mr. Journalist: All of the wine grape varieties grown and harvested in California (and most everywhere else in North America) are "non-native," having been imported from Europe, to which in turn they had migrated over the centuries from faraway places such as the Tigris-Euphrates watershed. The varietals mentioned -- Pinot Grigio and Syrah [aka "Shiraz," which gives a clue to its ancient origins in the Fertile Crescent] -- are not any less indigenous than the more widely planted Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, simply less well known.
It will be a real pity if the market forces battering California wine makers cause them to be less exploratory in their planting. One of the major strains in the California wine story over the past twenty years or so has been the constant exploring by adventurous vintners to find out which sorts of grapes actually make the best wines, and in which parts of the state each produces its best self. Finding the "most right" locations has been one of the ongoing delights of drinking California Pinot Noir, for example, which is proving year by year that the places it does best -- such as northern Santa Barbara County or the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County or the lovely crinkly edges of the Russian River below Healdsburg -- are not the places it was generally planted during most of the 20th Century (read: Napa Valley). As for exploring new wine grapes, Cabernet, Chardonnay and the other old standbys of Bordeaux and Burgundy are all well and good, but the grapes associated with the Rhone region of France -- Syrah in particular among the red varietals, with Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne carrying the banner for the whites -- and to a lesser extent the grapes of Italy have been coming into their own in the Golden State, producing wines of greater interest with each passing vintage. Santa Barbara County (again!) and San Luis Obispo County have been shining in this field so far, but there's no telling where the really optimal planting spots will eventually be found. And because those varietal-locational concatenations may still remain undiscovered, it is to be hoped that California wine makers, in Eliot's phrase, "shall not cease from exploration" and will find them out.
Incidentally, the De Loach version of Pinot Grigio to which the Newsweek article refers is a good one, if you should stumble upon one of the few remaining bottles at your local Trader Joe's market. It has a good deal more heft, acidity and lusciousness than the mass-produced Italian versions out there, and strongly resembles some of the fine Pinot Gris -- same grape, different Romance language -- coming out of Oregon. I could go on about Pinot Gris being the white grape for which Oregon wine growers should abandon that pesky Chardonnay, but I think I've run on quite sufficiently for the moment and so I won't.
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