Don's Gillette's Weekly Wine Blog
Weekly musings from our store's resident wine guru
Don has over thirty years experience in the wine industry. For the last eighteen years his attention has been focused on the growing local industry. Don has a large following of customers who search out his opinions (never in short supply!) on new releases and on what's currently most distinctive on our shelves. Others seek his insights on wineries and trends that are still under the radar. Check back here each week for Don's latest thoughts on various wine-related topics. Read Don's full bio...
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Mapping the Vines
There is unrelenting forward motion in the California wine industry. Some of it is technological innovation, some is driven by market trends, and a great deal is related to the planting of new vineyards. Nearly every week our staff sees a new vineyard designation on a fact sheet or bottle - which sends us, often in vain, scrambling for a map.
Up to date wine appellation maps are always received with excitement around here and lately some especially useful ones have become available. New versions from the Green Valley (a Russian River Valley sub-appellation); Santa Barbara County's Santa Rita Hills (now being forced, for legal reasons, to re-name itself the Sta. Rita Hills); and Paso Robles, are interesting and helpful, for quite different reasons.
Most fascinating of the three is the on-line map of the Green Valley. This interactive site reveals the full extent of the Valley's late 1990s planting boom. Although maps produced fifteen years ago showed a largely blank patch of land, vineyards now extend border to border. This is noteworthy because those of us who regularly get to taste bottlings from the new sites are flabbergasted by their overall level of quality.
For all the attention and fanfare the film Sideways brought to Santa Barbara County's Santa Rita Hills appellation, the area is still largely unexploited. This is made evident by the terrific new map/poster of the area put out by the Sta. Rita Wine growers Alliance. I got my copy of the poster as a gift from Ampelos winery, but the poster can be purchased from the Alliance.
Two big challenges face the vineyard cartographer - the constant emergence of new producers and the desire for anonymity on the part of some established ones. The first problem is self-evident, but the second may come as a surprise. When great fame and the accompanying sales crunch hit a small winery, it tends to respond in one of two ways. Such operations either grow as swiftly as they can, or stay the same size: basking in the social and financial rewards of cult status. Cult wineries, with no more bottles to sell, invariably ask cartographers to leave them off the next map. Fans may have noticed that "drop-ins" at Colgin, Screaming Eagle and the like, are not encouraged.
The newest Paso Robles map skirts these difficulties brilliantly. It is remarkably up to date, with nearly every winery -- regardless of its scarcity – represented. It is worth asking them to mail you a copy, because the booklet that includes it is very useful.