"...weird herby flavors..." and "California promotes wines that don't suck"

Um...since when did fresh herbs become weird?! And millions of people think that California wines don't suck...but that certainly isn't an indication of greatness. Sheesh.

I'm just coming over from the Dark Side - having just finished your book - and I already wanna smack this guy with a tack hammer.

Hah! Well I haven't read your book yet, Alice, but that article just makes me more excited to crack the spine! Doesn't the fellow realize there would be no California wine without Europe? Where is the sense of history, the awe of creation? Oh well, maybe next generation???

Oh dear Alice,
Mr Matt's uneasily paraniod tirade reminds me of GW's Iraq judgemental rhetoric - if not for for us, then you MUST be against us. As a consumer, I only seek positive, enthusiastic reviews that make me want to buy a bottle, not be regaled by chauvanistic point scoring. Every wine producing country has it's good and it's bad - seeing one's own short comings in the light of constructive reflection by others is maybe called growth. The best wine fun I've ever had is when the silliness of arbitary boundaries, be they mental or national, are well and truly crossed.
We know wine is joy - I wonder if op ed journos do? I may not agree all the time with you, Alice - Just how much brett can you stand? - but I know your thoughts are positive, and born of passion and love for the planet's best drink.
ignore the small minds - Cheers - Andrew

Actually he does make one useful point: "Powerful fruit -- the product, for the most part, of extremely well-cultivated grapes, not technological manipulation ...". Down in my part of France (Languedoc) we have a California-like climate, and winemakers who loath technological interventions just as much as you do. But, by caring for their vineyards well, and waiting for the Languedoc sun to do its work, they produce rich fruity wines that get high Parker points. If you can find any, try Alain Chabanon's Les Boissieres or the Petit Merle (mostly merlot). High points from Parker, totally unspoofulated, and not to my taste. His Esprit, on the other hand, is now the greatest red in the region.

His sentences are too long and spoofulated.

Actually in California and the new world "powerful" fruit is often the result of irrigation & fertilizing manipulation. And then there is often plenty of manipulation in the winery needed to get the damn things to ferment and then balance out with added acids and tannins. So, there goes that theory.

Hannity, er, um, Debord does make a good point. California wine is a great global mega trend "product". Something that has been floating around in my head since finishing your book is that modern, global style wine making is very much like Starbucks (which I am sipping right now). It produces a consistent "product". Someone that feels no particular passion towards wine (like my feeling towards coffee) and/or has only been exposed to mega trend "product" is undoubtedly well served by consistent "product". Obviously there are those of us that want more from our wine, much like my coffee passionate friends that go pale when they see me drinking my iced fat free, sugar free vanilla latte (California Chardonnay anyone? oh wait, throw some mango papaya syrup in there). Anyhow, Starbucks doesn't have a powerful media machine behind it arguing that they make the best coffee in the world. If it were me, I would give my drink of choice a 95. I think I will just have to make a bumper sticker that says "friends don't let friends drink spoofulated wines" and keep trying to turn on as many like minded friends as possible to the good stuff.

I recently attended a quite large tasting of California wines. I can share many of Alice's views.
I was particularly shocked by the wines made of Syrah as the overt oak influence killed off all of its glorious varietal character.
There were some great Cabernets, to be sure, but also those lacked any identification with the place they come from.

I am certainly biased as I grew up in Germany and have been a fan of more traditional Italian and German wines for quite some time. Wines which will speak of their origin and are nowadays as technically sound as any Californian wine.

Cheers,

Darius

"...Bold cabernets and buttery Chardonnays trumped the pinched pencil-lead of first-growth Bordeaux and the ashen angularity of Grand Cru Burgundy...".
Oh for the linear mind where all is so plainly sorted and any miasma of dancing whirly wonder is regimented into a well ordered goose step.

I suppose that makes for good copy and symphonies of shrill hysteria, journalistic jousting and philological parrys. As we sink into the autumn sunset of our empire, I grow tired of these vapid saber rattling shills. Give me quality.

But really, ashen angularity? In my read, it seems M. Matt's a bit rushed when tasting. I pity his wife.

Doesn't that mean more "Old World style" wines for ME? Oh right, I fear the "East Coast collective..." Oh good lord! I live in Ohio and I can tell (and very, very happily appreciate!) authentic from overripe & manipulated.

Thank you Alice, for what you do.

John

They sure gave that guy a lot of space.

"...the multitude of extraordinary wines from the state, many of which exhibit all the Old World complexity and balance anyone could ask for."

Contradicting himself completely here, as at first he insults the Old World style and here he calls it complex and in balance. Dolt.

I'm a west coast wine micro retailer and though I stock a few of the overly extracted and highly octane infused for those who crave it, I sure don't search it out for personal consumption and I don't promote it except for brief moments of amusement, so not all west coasties have bought into the fruit phenom. I would prefer a real return to terroir as opposed to the stated perceived one's now offered up by the marketeers of the moment but the realities of mass marketing are still unpleasantly with us. I have had several reps though telling me their California portfolios are not moving all that well. Hmmm... Could it be we have reached infatuation saturation? Probably not, though to my greatest surprise, I recently weened a fat fruit forward fanatic over to a totally unoaked Chinon Cab Franc, albeit the roasted lamb tidbits helped. I now sit happily flabbergasted.

Thank you, your Holiness. Awesome piece of wine writing. Our wines will be greeted as liberators....

Please sit back and enjoy a bottle of our 2005 Barry Bonds Estate Cabernet.

I mean really, is this the best response someone could write to your article?

And to call you a terroirist? Is he old enough to drink wine?

Advantage Feiring. Next please.

Keep going!

As an American living in France, it is at times difficult for me to reconcile my American cultural upbringing (anything is possible in any context, but somehow nothing really matters) with what, as an adult, I find engrossing about the French way of life and culture, which I can broadly define as a respect for the knowledge of those who lived before you, who created the culture you now share and continue to build. Mr. Debord hit a nerve within me when he glibly asserted that the interventionist winemaker has become a whipping boy and "to pity the vinter who decided to mess around with what God gave him". If you think about other “god-given gifts”, such as livestock and produce, which in the hands of humans who have chosen to “mess around” with them, you will find modern day horrors such as current American and international feedlots, genetically modified produce and the pathetic, super-processed Supermarket. Wine is no different, in the hands of a man who sees it most importantly as a product and a profit. I think there exists a strong association that New World winemakers add chemicals to their wines and to their land, they employ extremely consumptive irrigation systems which use millions of gallons of water by month, they think it necessary to use new oak for each vintage without considering the environmental impact, and they view their bottles as a luxury commodity, not an agricultural product. But this all exists in Europe as well. And do you know why vingerons began using chemicals in the first place? Because the were sold the image of being modern, of being global, of life being easier because they would no longer have to spend all their time in the field cultivating their land, they could have a little luxury too. But the potential of that lifestyle was and is undercut by the corruptness born when industrial methods are introduced to a natural process. At the moment France has a small but strong and righteous natural wine movement (and pretty rock n roll too!). The philosophy is based on the desire to live a life of gustatory satisfaction, complete with an honest ethical resolve, a small luxury in itself. Cheers to you Ms. Feiring for understanding and taking part – trinch!

Sweet Jesus! I was reading the article and I was all, "Who IS this guy?" I mean really, he uses a phrase like "mad, dishonest joust" (!) and like any reactionary he even trots out the old hippie straw-man. What's worse, I realize he's trying to be satirical and over-the-top -- he just fails miserably, because he doesn't understand satire and he's wildly inconsistent in applying it. Really, I've been less embarrassed for Ann Coulter at points!

I will say I've had some terrific, well-made Ridge zin-based blends but my palate rejects zinfandel like it's a foreign organ. Oh well...

Wow, what overheated rhetoric. What bloviation. What a wretchedly constructed argument. How tendentious and lacking in those strangers to right-wingers everywhere, the crazy little things called "facts." Evidence. Analysis. And whatnot. Maybe he wrote it under the influence of 2,3 glasses of 16% Pinot Noir.

I just love that you didn't actually link to his LA Times article. That is perhaps the biggest insult to his story.