INDUSTRY: American Wine Comes of Age

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Despite the modern vintners' technical progress, wine is still basically the product of the grape and the airborne yeast that turns the C6H12O6 sugar present in grape juice into C2H5OH alcohol. "Nature on her own can make wine," says Brother Timothy, cellar master of the Christian Brothers wineries. "Just crush some grapes into a glass and eventually wine is made. Of course, we do a little constructive babysitting." Most wine makers do little more than take some grapes, crush them, add extra yeast, put them in big vats or tanks for a couple of months and—pow!—wine. Of course, there are some variations on that general theme. The amount and quality of yeast can be manipulated to produce different degrees of fermentation. The grape skins can be taken out part way through the process to reduce a wine's eventual tannin content. After a wine is fermented, it requires patient aging in a wood or stainless-steel cask, and sometimes in the bottle, before it is drinkable. Premium wine makers often add egg whites to help remove sediment. Gallo wines are left more or less unattended during aging, except to remove sediment by filtration. Only after they are completely aged does Julio Gallo step into one of his tasting rooms for the final taste test.

California wine men finally have products that compete cork to cork in quality with prestigious imports. Inexpensive California jug wines are of much higher quality than the vin ordinaire consumed prodigiously by working-class Frenchmen. The great Château wines of France outshine the New World's best, but the grape gap is closing. Says Vintner Robert Mondavi: "Compared with the best of Europe, we have a long way to go yet to get the maximum out of the grape. But we are learning fast."

California wines are getting better every year as new types of grapes are planted. In the past decade, California oenologists have developed a thousand varieties, learned how to rid the old ones of deadly viruses, and increased the per-acre yields on many kinds of grapes. California wines tend to be milder, softer, fruitier and sometimes less watery than their European counterparts. There are two basic reasons for the difference. First, California's warmer, more uniform climate produces wines with a lower acidity than their European counterparts. Because grape sugar content tends to be higher, California wines often have a higher alcohol content (up to 14%, compared with French wines' usual 12%). The second reason is that man interferes with nature more in California than in France. "There is no ceiling to quality improvement," argues Julio Gallo. "No wine in the world is so good that it couldn't be better." California grapes are usually fermented in refrigerated vats—a chill that yields the lighter, fruitier wine. California wines are filtered more than French wines to remove sediment.