Your Guide To California Wine

This September is the 20th anniversary of California Wine Month. More than 80% of all U.S. wines are produced in California, but just how did California become so dominant in the wine industry? We thought the best way to commemorate this year’s milestone was by exploring the heritage and unique history of California wine-making.

Grapes From The Old World

Wine has been produced in California since the 17th century, when Spanish Jesuit missionaries landed in the more southern regions. Requiring wine for religious services, they planted vines native to their homeland in the Mediterranean. In the following years, the industry slowly grew and expanded northward. Spurred on by the Gold Rush, many new settlers flocked to California, drastically increasing the demand for wine. This lead to the establishment of wineries in the regions now known as Sonoma and Napa counties.

Around the turn of the 20th century, both pestilence and the passage of the 18th Amendment, beginning Prohibition, saw to a steep decline in wineries and vineyards. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, California wine-making slowly recovered, becoming synonymous with sweet port-style wines and jug wines. However, a new generation of wine-makers started producing high-quality, innovative wines that would soon take the world by storm.

The Judgement Of Paris

The 2008 movie, Bottle Shock, introduced a wider audience to the famous Judgement of Paris tasting in 1976, which pitted upstart California wines against some of the most prestigious French Bordeaux and Burgundy. An entirely French panel of esteemed wine experts blindly tasted through the entries expecting to laugh California off the table. However, the joke was on them – when the results were tabulated it was California that walked away winner in both the red and white category, establishing Napa as one of the premier wine regions in the world. You can imagine the uproar this caused in France – assuming it was a terrible mistake, they’ve repeated the tasting every 10 years since. France is yet to win.

While names like Stag’s Leap and Chateau Montelena took the glory that day, there have been many other wineries throughout California’s history that laid the foundation for their success. In fact, many unexpected brands that are still on shelves today were monumental in building the California wine industry into what it is today. For example, we’re familiar with Almaden for their inexpensive boxed wines, but they became California’s first commercial winery in 1852. Now a designated California Historical Landmark, the Old Almaden Winery produced the first California wines to hit consumer palates.

Where To Start With California Wine

Here are a few more of our favorite selections that are seeped with California Heritage from our resident sommelier, Drew: