While many North American states make wine, it's California, (along
with Washington
State & Oregon) that drive the fine wine (vitis
vinifera) industry.
In 2005 California alone accounted for 200,000 ha of wine vines (as opposed
to those grown for jelly or raisins), well in excess of Washington's 12,150ha
and Oregon's 5,500ha. California's Napa Valley is
acknowledged to be the world's second best source of Cabernet
Sauvignon/Bordeaux blends & Chardonnays (in Carneros), while its Santa Barbara
& Sonoma
Counties is home to world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Top-class
Zinfandel is also grown in Sonoma County.
The Californian wine industry was born in the south on the back of 18th
century Spanish missionaries and it consolidated in the north following the
1849 Gold Rush. Soon after, vitis vinifera varieties including Zinfandel made
their appearance, edging out the inferior Mission grape. French & German
immigrants (Krug, Schram, Beringer) helped develop the industry
initially in Sonoma & then Napa before fanning out to the Santa Cruz Mountains,
south of the Bay area.
Cabernet Sauvignon was first produced as a wine in Sonoma in
the late ninenteeth century while many of Napa's reds at this time were made
from Rhone varieties & Zinfandel. The viticultural boom was
accelerated by the transnational railway but then stopped dead in its tracks by
phylloxera during the 1890s. However, as with Europe, a negative was turned
into a positive as the disease allowed the industry to effect many viticultural
improvements (varieties, vine densities, trellising). Prohibition threatened to
further derail the industry further, were it not for an unprecedented demand
for grapes for home winemaking, as well as for sacramental wine.
Despite the Repeal in 1933 the Fine Wine (Napa) industry didn't recover
until the 1960s, when the likes of Ch Montelena, Heitz, Robert Mondavi
& Paul Draper made their move. 1976 provided a further boost as
several of Napa's wines outshone their French counterparts in a blind tasting
known as The Judgement of Paris. Such success was short-lived though as
the industry was hit first by the oil crisis, then by the re-emergence of
phylloxera during the late 1980s; the fad for White Zinfandel was an additional
set-back.
The modern era sees an insatiable appetite for Napa wineries, pushing the
price of land beyond even the reach of the Silicon Valley techies, piling on
even more pressure on winemakers to hit 100 points & so justify their fee
& the $150 bottle price-tags.
Californian viticulture is made possible thanks to the presence of the
Pacific Ocean, its cool Humbolt Current, that tempers the summer heat
through cyclical on-shore breezes and rolling fog, so extending the ripening
time of the grapes in the vine.
Additionally to the east of San Francisco the 5,000 metre high Sierra
Nevada Mountain range triggers precipitation which in turn feeds
Central Coast irrigation channels. While the Winkler system of heat summation
points to regional differences it appears to ignore the subtleties of
terroir.
