Out & About Autumn 2021

TOP TIPPLES As we head into autumn, ROMAIN BOURGER, head sommelier at The Vineyard hotel and UK sommelier of the year 2019, shares some insight about one of his favourite wine regions – California!

I have been lucky enough during my time at the Vineyard to have tasted some fantastic wines and also learnt a great deal about the Golden State. The first recorded planting of a vineyard was by the Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino at San Bruno in 1683, but was never harvested. In 1779, Franciscan missionaries planted California’s first sustained vineyard at Mission San Juan Capistrano, also the site of the first winery. The Mission grape dominated California wine production until about 1880. California’s first import of European vine cuttings was in 1830 and the first vines were planted in Napa Valley in 1838. In 1840, Agoston Haraszthy, a Hungarian soldier, planted Wisconsin’s first vineyard. In 1849 he built California’s oldest commercial winery, Buena Vista Winery, near the town of Sonoma. Haraszthy made several trips to import cuttings in the 50 and 60s from European vineyards to California and is considered to be one of the founders of the California wine industry. In 1861, Charles Krug established Napa Valley’s first commercial winery in St Helena and species of Native American grapes were taken to botanical gardens in England. Unfortunately, they carried a species of root louse called phylloxera, which attacks and feeds on the vine roots and leaves and decimated nearly all the vineyards of Europe. As a result, Thomas V. Munson, a horticulturist in Texas, suggested grafting the European Vinifera vines onto American Riparia rootstocks. So there began a long, laborious process of grafting every wine vine in Europe over to American rootstocks.

California accounts for nearly 90 per cent of the entire American wine production and produces nearly 3m litres of wine yearly The New Californian wine industry In 1938, Beaulieu Vineyards (BV) hired André Tchelisticheff who introduced several new techniques and procedures, such as aging wine in small French Oak barrels, cold fermentation, vineyard frost prevention, and malolactic fermentation. In 1965, Napa Valley icon Robert Mondavi broke away from his family’s Charles Krug estate to found his own in Oakville, California – the first new large- scale winery to be established in the valley since before prohibition. 1976 Judgement of Paris Tasting On May 24, 1976, a blind tasting was held in Paris with a panel made up exclusively of French wine experts. After comparing six California Chardonnays with four French Chardonnays, three of the top four were Californian. Six of the nine judges ranked Chateau Montelena the highest; Chalone Vineyard came in third and Spring Mountain Vineyard fourth. When reds were evaluated, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars was ranked number one. By 1900, America had a fully-developed commercial wine producing business, which was swiftly destroyed by Prohibition. Wartime Prohibition in 1919 forbade the “manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors”. By the end of Prohibition, in 1933, fewer than 100 of the 2,500 winemaking operations had survived and by 1960, there were still only 271. It took more than half-acentury for the Californian wine industry to recover.

This competition focused a great deal of attention on wines from the Napa Valley. More than 100 grape varieties are grown in California, including French, Italian and Spanish wine varietals as well as hybrid grapes. The seven leading grape varieties are: Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot noir, Sauvignon blanc, Syrah and Zinfandel. But California also makes some fantastic sparkling wines, some by very famous Champagne houses including Taittinger (Domaine Carneros) and Louis Roederer (Quartet). The sparkling wine industry there traces its roots to Sonoma in the 1880s with the founding of Korbel Champagne Cellars. Today most California sparkling wine is largely made from the same grapes used in Champagne-Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and some Pinot Meunier. California accounts for nearly 90 per cent of the entire American wine production and produces around 3m litres of wine a year. Napa Valley produces just four per cent of the whole region’s wine – a mere four-tenths of one percent of the world’s wine. Napa Valley is roughly the size of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or and about one- eighth the size of Bordeaux. California’s wine regions are generally classified as having a Mediterranean climate. The system of appellation is called American Viti-cultural Area (AVA). An AVA is a geographic grape growing area that possesses distinguishable characteristics, including microclimate and terrain, and cultural and historic distinction. California is divided into seven wine areas – Northern California, North Coast, Central Coast, Southern Area, South Coast, Central Valley, Sierra Foothills – making it one of the most diverse and dynamic wine regions in the world. But don’t take my word for it, try some of the Golden State’s delicious wines from your local merchants.

When Captain Gustave Niebaum established Inglenook Winery in Rutherford, he produced the first

Bordeaux style winery in the US. His Inglenook wines won gold medals at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.

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O&A AUTUMN 2021