Dig the New Breed

Some might expect the wine editor of the San Francisco Chronicle to be a hardcore flag waver for his state. But Jon Bonné was an East Coast transplant with a healthy level of unease about California’s oft-misguided tracks, the overdone trophy wines it banked on for image and profit. The writer saw it for what it was: A full-fledged tumble from grace, an oaky embarrassment of riches. He thirsted for revival, knowing the wine industry of the Golden State had the goods and was good at its core.

With his new work, The New California Wine, the title tells the story. Within the pages of the handsome and substantial book, Bonné carves out three parts to help readers rediscover and explore the rebooted Cali ethos: The Changes, The Regions That Count and the New Guard of Producers.

Bonné explains how the border dwellers, experimenters, outsiders and youngsters are moving closer to center and changing the basic nature of what it means to be a California winemaker. Their results, predominantly influenced by Old World approach, are sometimes flawed but increasingly exhilarating, an intentional liberation from the state’s more recent gout at the hand of a constellation of status producers.

While the author takes care to genuflect to the pioneers who generally got it right all along, like Paul Draper of Ridge, the reader meets a healthy cross section of this fresh California class, learns of their ideas on water management and farming techniques. It’s about the good sense of tuning into the earth, working with the materials at hand and finding a more natural balance in a state more aligned with a State of Excess.

The key for Bonné is access to the thoughtful and serious personalities who are digging in for keeps. He visits them in sites that are reconfiguring California terroir – places like Contra Costa County, the Sierra foothills and Paso Robles. Such examination comes in colorful, descriptive language. Consider this passage:

“Balance, in my eyes, with no disrespect to my colleagues, has nothing to do with numbers. In a way it belittles the craft,” Greg Brewer, who makes wine for both Brewer-Clifton and Melville, as well as his own dramatically ripe Diatom Chardonnays, told me. “These people say, ‘Oh, here’s this wine, it’s 13.2.’ To me, it’s like saying, ‘Oh here’s my girlfriend, she’s blonde.’ Or, ‘Here’s my girlfriend, she’s five foot ten.’”

The final section of the book is more practically aligned. A guide to wines of the so-called New California, it breaks down worthy offerings in categories: Pinot Noir, Chard, Cab, Rhône-style, “new whites” (varieties like Malvasia, Albariño and Semillon) and “back to the future” – a return to the glory grapes of Cali’s near past, such as Zinfandel and Syrah.

Admittedly, there is a bias toward lesser-known, low-yield producers but, despite the limited access to their fruits, Bonné’s examination of the new landscape and the redemptive quality of his writing rekindles curiosity and excitement for the American wine region. It’s a world at once vastly potent, corrupted and endlessly alluring to most if not all wine consumers. Finally, it’s anchored by the truth that, if we’re honest, we all root for California’s reign. Regardless of its over-extracted history, it embodies the precious American quality of possibility reimagined.