Food & Drink: A Watch on the Wine

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Gallo argues that the best way to boost wine consumption in the U.S. is to start the beginner off on the pints of 49¢ and 69¢ sweet wines for which he is famous. "Then," he explains, "after a couple of years, they'll be drinking a drier wine." Meanwhile, Gallo's judgment of the public taste results in the sale of millions of gallons of his artificially flavored Ripple, and Thunderbird—both spiked with CO².

The embattled traditional vintners, who have been doggedly trying to build the reputation of U.S. wines among the connoisseurs, react to such mass marketing tactics with apoplectic distaste. Says Wine Expert Brother Timothy of Christian Brothers, one of several winemaking religious orders: "Nothing is sacred in the wine industry. There was a time when tradition counted, but the revolution is here, and it would only be fair to say that Mr. Gallo started it." Grumbles Winemaker Louis Martini: "There should be federal laws to prevent Gallo from calling those flavored drinks 'wine.' It's a disgrace to the whole history of wine." Another Napa Valley man adds bitterly: "Caesar fell. Mussolini fell. Gallo will fall!" Retorts Gallo, his frozen stare framed by rimless glasses: "It's all sour grapes. When all the sour grapes are swept away, there isn't an honest man in the industry who would tell unfriendly stories about me."

Screw Caps. The vineyards of the premium producers—Almaden, Beaulieu, Beringer, Cresta Blanca. Inglenook, Korbel, Krug, Louis Martini, Masson, Wente, et al.—are concentrated chiefly in the Napa Valley and coastal areas near San Francisco. Most own their own vineyards, bottle their table wine in the old traditional style of the good French winemakers, studiously disdaining such modern advances as concrete fermentation vats and screw-cap bottle tops. Their wine is labeled with the name of the grape from which it is made, so that buyers can approximate the European equivalent in a California product. In white wines, Pinot Chardonnay, for example, is related to a Pouilly-Fuissé or a Chablis, white Riesling to a dry Rhine, Sauvignon Blanc to a superior dry Graves; in the reds. Cabernet Sauvignon is like red Bordeaux, Pinot Noir like lesser Burgundy, Camay Beaujolais similar to the French Beaujolais.

Though it might shock some purists, who believe that opposite sides of the same French hill produce distinctively different wine, most California makers blend their wines, arguing that this assures consistent quality and taste from year to year. Sometimes wine from the year before is added; often the vintner, if his own crop happens to be small one year, will buy the crop of nearby growers. In fact, only the label "Estate Bottled" indicates that the wine is wholly grown and produced on the grower's own property.