OK fine! I was wrong!
My journey with California wine, and my standout wine discoveries from the state
I’m in Napa right now. I’m here for 27 hours. It’s freezing (by California standards). And I’m disappointed by all of this because, embarrassingly, this is my first time in Napa.
I’ve managed to live in California for three years and avoid going to Napa. I’ve spent brief periods in Sonoma, Santa Ynez, and Paso Robles, but I’ve been resistant to Napa for as long as I’ve been into wine. Most Americans seem to get into wine through Napa; they love the full-bodied, tannic, Bordeaux blends and oaked, rounded whites. After Napa, most other Americans I know tend to venture into Sonoma wines, then finally branch out into the old-world wines of Bordeaux, Piedmont, Burgundy, and Tuscany. This is changing with the preference among younger wine lovers for punchier, more drinkable styles, but – at least until recently – Americans always seemed to start with Napa.
I’m American, I love living in California, but the obsession with Napa wines always turned me off. My first exposure to wine was in Europe, where the $100 tastings you find in Napa are unthinkable ($100 just to TASTE wine?! Aren’t tastings supposed to make your wines accessible to new drinkers, so that they enjoy your wine and want to buy it?) and where bottles are just, well, cheaper (If I want an excellent Bordeaux blend, why wouldn’t I just buy something actually from Bordeaux? It’ll be $50 instead of $150 for the same quality). I also felt that Napa had more snobbery associated with it. That’s a massive generalization, I know. But, while in Europe conversations around wine are treated as regular conversations about life, I always felt that the Napa-obsessed acted as if they were part of some secret, elite club. I hate this approach to wine. Yes, wine is sexy, mysterious, historic, and hedonistic. But it’s also a drink. Not some secret club.
This knee-jerk reaction to Napa led to my overall skepticism of California wines, which drove me to continue buying “old-world” wines at Wally’s and K&L from my home in Los Angeles, hardly popping into the California section.
But, like the wines maturing in my cellar, I’ve evolved. In part because I feel ridiculous; I live in a state that produces over 80% of our country’s wine, with multiple stunning wine regions which double as culinary destinations. I also live in a state which has served as one of the greatest centers of innovation in the 21st century, and this has trickled down into wine: bold new styles, restorations of forgotten vineyards and varietals, a growing number of female winemakers, and modernized approaches to hospitality. I’ve realized the same closed-mindedness I’ve been projecting onto Napa aficionados is exactly the closed-mindedness I’ve been exhibiting by refusing to explore and appreciate what’s around me (very much including Napa).
So, in the spirit of California, I can change, and I have. While I’ll be teaching you guys about plenty of other great wine regions, in the background, I’m going to continue exploring a bunch of amazing wines from my state. Here are the California producers that have completely flipped my - admittedly erroneous - opinions.