Wine Enthusiast Magazine
SubscribeWhen was the last time you read an article saying, “I hate French wine. It sucks. I never drink it anymore and I pour it down the drain.”
Talk about rash generalizations. Talk about Francophobia. Talk about intolerance.
But that’s basically what wine writer Alice Feiring said in an op-ed piece in the LA Times. Only she didn’t say it about France, she said it about California.
Alice Feiring doesn’t like high alcohol or too much oak flavor, or wineries shaping their wines to please critics other than her. She nearly paints the whole state black for these sins. Being a Californian and a fan of California wines, her piece bugged me when I read it yesterday.
But what was it that bugged me? Is she right that high alcohol wines can be a turnoff? Yes, if they aren’t balanced with acidity and tannins and have plenty of flavor to fill out the body of alcohol. But there are tons of wines like this from California.
Is she right that some California wines have more oak flavor than worldly wine drinkers like? Yes, but primarily the cheaper California appellation wines that are tricked up to taste more expensive.
What really irked me, on reflection, was that she and sometimes other critics, usually from the East, feel it’s fair to condemn virtually all California wines, when they’d never do the same for any other region.
Not very often has a critic taken such a broad swipe at a whole region’s wines, like this. I tried to recall a similar screed against Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Chile, but couldn’t think of one. But I can think of many examples from The New York Times and even San Francisco Chronicle that write off broad swaths of California’s products.
I don’t think this is because those places don’t make high-alcohol wines from hot, sunny regions like Spain does in Priorat, France does in Chateauneuf, Italy does in Puglia and Sicily, etc.
Or because they don’t use tons of new oak for flavoring, as France does in Bordeaux, Chile does with many Cabernets, and Italy does with some Barolo.
It’s not that California is the biggest, most successful wine region in the world and makes the easiest target. France is the world’s biggest, making more than twice as much wine as California.
It’s not that California uses the most chemistry and technology to shape its wine flavors: that’s Australia. It’s not that California is threatening to take over the wine market, so that no other choices will be available: CA wine is actually losing market share to imports.
So what is it that makes California such a prime target for bashing?
Filed under: Critics/Competitions, Regions
24 Comments
24 Responses to “What’s Behind the California Wine Bashing?”
Please Wait
May 8th, 2008 at 3:03:59 PM
It bugs me too, and that is a great question! It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the wine of California compared to other regions as you pointed out. All I can come up with is that perhaps the perception of California wine-makers as wealthy playboys come winery owners juxtaposed to the pious, salt-of-the-earth image of wine-makers in other regions has something to do with it. But again, that’s an example of another gross generalization based on a marginal group. Your question brings to mind another question along the same line: Why is Old Money better than New Money? Following this train of thought and assuming for a moment this statement is true, one might come up with the following answers: land stewardship vs. resource exploitation; wealth generated from landholdings which also sustain a community vs. making a personal fortune off consumers; connections to nobility, etc But, I’m getting way off on a tangent. :)
May 8th, 2008 at 3:14:19 PM
Taster B: You may be on to something there, and in a deeper, more thoughtful vein than I had prospected. Old Money vs. New Money is a revealing way to think of it. Much of the appeal of French and Italian wines comes from knowing these wines come from unique, archaic, human-history laden locations, and perhaps not so much from the taste of the wine itself.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:14:59 PM
I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed Alice Feiring’s article! It’s refreshing to find someone else who makes their mind up before they taste. I feared I was the only one who prejudged wines with an agenda based on stereotypes and myth.
Personally, I need to see the soul of the winemaker before I can drink their wine. They must be pure of heart and intellectually chaste before I can issue a “thumbs up” on their bottlings. Their techniques must be primitive and their geographic region must be foreign, because I believe that all things foreign are better than all things local, unless it’s local produce that’s raised organically by people who are pure of heart and intellectually chaste.
Sure, many of the wines I love are riddled with flaws. But, these are honest, real, hand-hewn flaws…not fake, commercial, mass-produced flaws.
You go Alice! And when you get there, don’t forget to write.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:33:59 PM
I sincerely cannot tell whether Timmy the Borg is being sarcastic or not. If you are, it is brilliant.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:13:06 PM
Timmy the Borg, don’t forget to mention that all winemakers that use a new barrel should be beheaded instantly.
Wow, that was a very stereotypical article. Because all wineries in California use technology on their wines, and all French wines are pure as the driven snow. Sure. Those machines that pull up the winery in Bordeaux after a rainy harvest aren’t there to pull water out of the juice. And certainly no CA wineries use natural yeast, not even the top Napa wineries. And for the high alcohol, you’d think that now that we pick for berry, not green pepper, flavors, we could have lower alcohol. What are these winemakers doing, anyways? Because I’m sure she never picks apart a wine for tasting like green pepper. To summarize, Alice Feiring is right about everything, especially wine, and we’re all wrong. “Here’s what I like, and everything else sucks” is great journalism. I’m tired of reading articles like this one that are so simplistic, especially from self proclaimed experts. Aargh, Timmy the Borg, let’s get drunk on raisin juice.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:15:09 PM
Woah, just saw this gem:
“Alice Feiring is a journalist, food critic and the author of the forthcoming book, “The Battle for Wine and Love — Or How I Saved the World from Parkerization.”
Wow, ego say what?
May 9th, 2008 at 4:51:06 PM
Timmy – well done, sir.
Alice Feiring, I double-dog-dare you to go make wine for a living instead of criticizing others’ work for one. You’ll lose weight.
People, trust your own palates. And memo to France, if you could only get the ripeness us Californians can…imagine the possibilities.
Vigneron, to be fair, it was an op-ed piece, not an article. A crappy op-ed, but it is what it is.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:09:09 PM
When was the last time you read an article saying, “I hate French wine. It sucks. I never drink it anymore and I pour it down the drain.”
I heard this right before the war in Iraq. :)
May 10th, 2008 at 9:45:42 AM
Well here’s the written proof that France too gets bashed once in a while (from Wine Spectator Forum). I wish people wrote about what they like instead of what they hate, I would save their readers time and a lot of trees…
Hervé Lalau (Belgium & France)
Posted Feb 28, 2005 08:42 PM
I know that I’m going to get a bunch of noses out of joint here, but in my opinion, on the whole, French wine sucks.
First of all, it is way too dry for me. Even the CdP’s are too dry for me. I was at a Francophile’s house over Christmas — he handed me a glass of the “good stuff.” I drank it, and then asked for something a little fruitier. He then opened something else, and it, too, was dry as a bone.
Next, it is WAY too expensive. The very best Califronia wines run around $175/bottle. The very best French wines run around $1000/bottle. To me, this is not a result of a product that is seven times better. Please!
The really good stuff takes too damned long to be “ready to drink.” We can’t all have the palate of DRAB, and I’m just not patient enough.
I can’t read the labels.
The whole Controllee Appelation mess (whatever the hell you call it) is a joke. Why is it that there are fifth growths that are far better than some of the first growths?
Government control — bad idea!
I should disclose my bias — I don’t really like French people either. Now, generally speaking, most of the French people who are involved in the wine industry are pretty cool and I’d love to have them over to my house for dinner. But in the final analysis, when I think of French people, I’m thinking they’re all a bunch of Jacques Chiracs. Hard to separate my distaste for the French with their wine.
And when it comes right down to it, the taste of the wine just doesn’t do it for me. I mean, a nicely aged bordeaux is “fine,” but that’s really it — just “fine.” I’d rather have a young CaliCab than a six year old Bordeaux. And I’d rather have anything Aussie, an OR or WA pinot, or a Argentinian malbec.
And as G-Dead points out below, French wines are corked 2-3 times more often than California wines.
So — there it is……
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Golf&Pinot Nut, Mar 01, 2005 10:23 AM
May 10th, 2008 at 6:36:43 PM
CA wine as a whole tends to be homogenized and while some offerings may be enjoyable, most are not
for $30 a bottle one can get more wine at better value from imports
May 11th, 2008 at 10:40:35 AM
Why the California bashing? I think it comes down to the mind-numbing arrogance. The market is increasingly getting fed up with wines grown in overly fertile volcanic soil that’s more suited to growing potatoes than fine when being passed off as a positive. The market is increasingly getting fed up with winemakers passing themselves off as “rock stars” and “geniuses.” There are geniuses out there. They, however, are sitting in a lab at Harvard trying to cure cancer or at the University of Chicago working on string theory. They, most definitely, are not in Napa Valley producing a beverage. The market is getting fed up with ridiculous prices. Cabernets of purchased bulk wine and press wine that are put into 3 pound bottles with cool labels and passed off as “artisan” for $40 a bottle (trust me, I know people who do this!)
The market is also getting more sophisticated. America’s wine drinkers are growing up and realizing that overripe cocktail wines are not the pinnacle.
California’s being left behind, and it’s too arrogant and self-absorbed to understand why. Think about this for a moment. In a period of a record weak dollar, imports are GAINING MARKET SHARE! The market backlash against California wine is so strong that it’s actually turned over a hundred years worth of international economics theory on its head. This is more than a simple public relations problem that can be served by more of the California wine industry’s usual delusional b.s.
May 11th, 2008 at 4:35:58 PM
Dejavu, All over again,Yogi? Didn’t this happen before in the late 1970′s? Wasn’t it the same complaint – our wines were overblown, too much oak, too ripe, didn’t go with food, too manipulated (except then wines were 12.5% alcohol rather than 15.5%, almost no one used oak extract or new barrels, everyone was seeking purity of varietal aroma, and reverse osmosis wasn’t even being used in catsup let alone beverages.) That complaint came from New York wine and food writers who knew more about writing than they did wine and food. In retrospect, there wasn’t really much to complain about except that California wine had been getting raves and winning ‘contests” with every region of the world for a decade and there was little left to write that would grab a headline. Rather than having the courage to point out that these criticisms were from self serving idiots, we let the myth catch on and voluntarily began the “food wine” era where everyone made high acid, low alcohol wines, fermenting the reds a few days on the skins in fear of tannin. Wineries became cooking schools. If you were a writer you came to the winery and got fed…and maybe tasted the wine. Talk about b.s. were we really serious when we made up all our crap about wine and food pairing being a science or an art?
Then Parker came along in the mid 80′s with a taste for prune, oak, Brett and alcohol…oh, and he had points. And the W.S. jumped on the bandwagon. If you had the points, you sold the wine. Others jumped on board and we came up with a name for wines that didn’t taste like the grape… “fruit forward.” Food was out, we made a wine that had it all. It was about how our wine stood out from 100 other wines he tasted that day. So for the last two decades little else has mattered in a wine but size, especially if devoid of varietal aroma, and with the sweet smell of ethanol augmented by oak. We pretended that raisined clusters of Cab on the vine in late October were there seeking “physiological ripeness”. Others, when caught with their flabby wines, blamed it on global warming.
So who is the culprit who gave this ignorant writer looking for headlines and wanting to sell books the fodder she needs? Mirror, please. Our pants have been down for decades and this uptight lady isn’t exactly the first to have noticed. So what do we do? How do we respond? I say the last thing we do is pay any more attention to what these nimrods have to say. She is an idiot, they are all idiots, and so are we for letting them run roughshod over our livelihood. What we need is a revolt. I don’t care who the writer is. Sorry Jim :) First, we don’t send them any wine. Second, we don’t talk to them. Third we don’t feed them. And finally, if anyone asks you if you know a particular writer, you just respond, “She (he) is an idiot.” It doesn’t matter whether they in fact are; it’s just the principle of the thing.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:53:33 PM
My wife and I have wine every day. I’m just an ole retired Univ. professor and can only afford the $15.00 and under stuff…..some of it is pretty nice! Most of what I see in WE and WS is well over my price. How many people can afford to drink $50.00 and up wines if they have wine every day??????
May 12th, 2008 at 9:13:22 AM
Seems to be an American failing, following the nearest critic, after all they do know what I like better than I do myself. Winemakers know this, it’s all a marketing ploy. Make wine to the critics taste and you get better scores. Better scores mean more people following the critic to the vineyard. More customers at the door means you can charge higher prices. Recent tests have shown that people seem to enjoy wine more if they know it is more expensive. As Lalau said wine seven times more expensive is not necessarily seven times better.
CA winemakers are only doing what the top French Chateaux have been doing for decades.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:19:22 AM
The above writer is correct about one thing. The California wine industry has no soul or historical grounding and simply chases each new market trend. While the European wine regions are certainly not immune to this, they at least have centuries of tradition to fall back on after this transitory moment of Parker madness has passed. They also have legions of wineries that never bowed down to the Emperor with no palate in the first place–witness his multiple bannings from Burgundy.
Unfortunately, the above writer’s prescription couldn’t be more mistaken. Yeah, that’s the ticket. More petulant Napatude is the answer: “if the writers won’t bow down to our greatness, we’ll take our toys and go home.”
Quite frankly, Napa–and by extension California–deserves to have its livelihood messed with. It’s called the free market, and that market is finally (overdue IMO) correcting itself in a manner that no amount of spin and Napatude will overcome. The California wine industry had better be on their knees praying that the next president doesn’t pursue a strong dollar policy. If the dollar does come back, California’s problems today will seem like the good old days.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:47:15 PM
Okay, I cannot sit on the sidelines any more. Remember the “Un-cola”? Remember “We try harder”? It’s called position marketing. The Devil gets a marketing pat on the back for positioning himself against God. Alice gets a pat on the back for positioning herself against Bob and bonus points for taking pot-shots at California.
Let’s face it, would you buy her book if it said that she was boycotting Panamanian wine and saving the world from Howdy Doody?
No, she’s not an idiot. She knows her marketing. Yes, she has strong opinions and likes to be vocal. I know ~thousands~ of people like her. She just knows how to sell her opinions. Other people are just happy to talk loud enough so they get the mistaken impression that other people are actually listening.
She knows she gets bad press. It drives business in.
Hmmm, I wonder if she remembers that Michel Rolland and Micro-ox are both French inventions…
May 13th, 2008 at 10:47:37 AM
I’m with Taster A. Remember when she made the blanket statement that all Long Island wines suck? Not nearly as controversial as “all California wines suck”, but it’s of the same vein. This is what she does, we’ve seen it before.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:39:02 AM
everybody writing op/ed needs a perspective and a ‘tone’ or a ‘schtick’ – nothing wrong with that
feiring has her angle and she works it and she admits to making an effort to maintan her tone and style of commentary
this is not about alice or parker – it is about the wines from california
rather than getting defenseive, whay not take a moment to think honestly and critically why and how any of the bashing could actually be substantiated
May 13th, 2008 at 4:55:31 PM
Did the LA Times allow a knowledgeable person to reply to Feiring’s op-ed piece? I once wrote an op-ed piece for them and it ran beside one espousing another point of view. Only fair. If I wrote something to counter Feiring, I’d point out the silliness of a statement that French winemakers are “fiercely committed to working with, not against, nature,” as opposed, presumably, to Californians. What does “working with nature, not against it” mean, anyhow?…that to call Sea Smoke and Brewer-Clifton “disasters” is an ad hominem attack unworthy of a journalist…that if she likes Dashe’s Zinfandels (and I like most of them, too), there are dozens of others in California that are as good. It all makes me wonder how many California wines Feiring actually tastes, and if she approaches our wines with such a biased attitude that she prevents herself from enjoying them.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:44:22 PM
Actually, Mary Baker of Dover Canyon Winery has posted a fair (yet smartly critical) review of the Feiring book on her winery blog. I am familiar with their wines, by the way, and they are living proof that Feiring is wildly uninformed about California.
Link to the review: http://dovercanyon.typepad.com/dover_canyon/2008/05/feirings-fantas.html
May 24th, 2008 at 11:34:13 AM
There sure a lot of serious people commenting here.
Read her book, drink a glass of wine and enjoy life
She has her right to her point of view, as do all the people commenting here. But to get all medieval on her (or anyone else) over the subject of wine is a bit overly dramatic.
Love what you are drinking and if not, pop another bottle, and move on.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:58:04 PM
Peace out, man. Totally. I hear you. However, some of us would like to discuss the article. Or the author’s book. Go on movin’ on, man . . . we’ll just stay here and . . . discuss.
June 17th, 2008 at 8:25:37 AM
@ Conner- close the door when you leave.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:49:49 AM
Amanda, thanks for the intelligent discourse on the pros or cons of the subject at hand. Sorry, but I get very tired of people jumping into a lively conversation to throw a wet blanket over an interesting debate while posing as a love child. It’s always a thinly disguised attempt to discourage dissenting opinions without offering any sound reasoning. And then, always, there are the gratuitous personal insults offered by people who have not bothered to make an interesting contribution.