BY BRUCE FARR
California’s vineyards
A tradition transformed into global triumph
J UST OVER A GENERATION ago, most Americans’ appreciation of wine was, to put it mildly, unsophisticated. Even in California—where the climate and soil quality combine to make for excellent terroirs along the coastal hills and lush river valleys—wines were largely an afterthought, given far less attention than, say, beers or spirit- based alcohols. One reason for American wine’s long, static start has to do with technique and technology. Although California wine production has been around since the 17th century, the state’s white wine in particular was made from grapes without much flavor. It took roughly 300 years for wineries to begin using a process called “cold fermentation,” which deliberately controls and slows grapes’ fermentation process at low temperatures. Coming off a post-WWII generation of American cocktails, the wine industry began to boom in the late 1970s and ’80s. And now, just a few decades later, California wine rivals nearly any other of the world’s most celebrated regions—Bordeaux and the Loire Valley in France, Mosel in Germany, and Rioja in Spain, among them. Viticultural haven In 1857, just a few miles northeast of the town square of Sonoma, Hungarian immigrant Count Agoston Haraszthy founded the first premium winery of Sonoma County. His Buena Vista Vineyards, remarkably, is still in operation today. In fact, Sonoma County is widely considered
the birthplace of California’s modern wine industry. And
although grapes and wine are the county’s bread and butter, so to speak, Sonoma has
a long history as one of the premier agricultural regions in the country, its rich soil and temperate, year-round weather fostering its reputation as one of the most robust food-growing regions in the world.
In addition to the centuries-old Buena Vista Winery, the town of Sonoma plays host to the Gundlach Bundschu vineyards, the longest continuously operating family winery in the U.S. What’s more, the county is home to no fewer than 19 AVAs, or American Viticultural Areas. Among them are some of the most celebrated winemaking sub-appellations in the world, including the Russian River Valley, Chalk Hill, Alexander Valley, and Los Carneros. Watershed moment If any single event can be credited with elevating California wine into the pantheon of world-class vintages, it was a blind tasting held at Paris’s Intercontinental Hotel in 1976. Now dubbed the Judgment of Paris, the legendary tasting by nine French wine experts pitted some of France’s most celebrated wines against a hastily assembled set of 12 California offerings, including Ridge Vineyards, Freemark Abbey, Spring Mountain, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, and Chateau Montelena—all of which were largely unknown in Europe. As one journalist covering the event put it, “The result [of the tasting] was expected to be obvious,” with the esteemed French wines presumed to crush the upstart Napa Valley vintages that
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IN YOUR CORNER ISSUE 18 | 2024
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