The truth about overripeness—From 1970 to now

Accusations of rampant overripeness in California wines are not, as some would have you believe, a new phenomenon. It is a festering sore that Euro-palates have picked on for the last forty years.

And for all I know, it goes back way beyond that, but “forty years” represents that limit of my personal time horizon in the wine collecting world. So, for me, this notion, this “red herring” that all California wines are out of control has always been a part of the fabric of wine criticism.

My first recollection of it goes back to the 1970 vintage. It was then that my wine pursuits shifted shape from enthusiasm into serious collection. I experienced the zealout-like rush of the newly converted and bought up everything I could to put into my cellar. The fabulous 1968s were about gone from the market, and while I managed to corral a few of those, it was the 1970s, both Bordelais and Californian, that formed the basis of my cellar then and still represent the largest group of older wines in it today.

Back before the 1976 Paris tasting, when the 1970 California Cabs and their Bordeaux equivalents experienced similarly successful vintages, the wine collecting world was doing side by side comparisons from one end of this country to the other. Those who preferred the French wines pointed accusatory fingers at California excess ripeness even then. “Too fat”, they said. “Too jammy”, they said. “Too obvious”, they said. “Will not age”, they said.

Those were the excuses offered for the large number of victories that wines like Ridge Monte Bello, Heitz Martha’s Vineyard, Chappellet and Mayacamas were extracting from the hidebound backsides of the Europhiles. The difference was not recognized then, as it is not recognized today, as just that—a difference, not a disqualifier.

Some will call it preference. Some will call it prejudice. It matters not. Ultimately, it is an excuse for one set of wines, for one tighter, less generous style. Never mind that the great Bordelais vintages then and now are those in which ripeness comes the easiest. And never mind that the accusation that California wines will not age did not start with the vintages of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is easy to make excuses based on difference.

So, today, we hear a cry that California wines have become overripe, that they need to return to the days when they were all under 14% alcohol, that today’s wines are too fat, too jammy, too obvious and that they will not age. Certainly, there are wines that fall into those camps. There always have been. Anybody remember that pruney Zinfandels we called Late Harvest, or the fat and fleshy, high pH Pinot Noirs of forty years ago.

But, the rush to brand an entire set of wines as misshapen, to use language like “Napa Cabernets have become a parody of themselves” or “today’s low-alcohol wines are California wine rethought” or branding anyone who would differ with your Euro-palate as “high alcohol apologists” is not only wrong-headed, it is also old hat. And it is the stuff of commentators who simply are not old enough to remember the long and heated debates about the 1970 vintages in Bordeaux and California. Those folks also do not know, because they would otherwise not be so quick to judge, that the 1970 California Cabs won more than their share of the early side-by-side contests, just as they fail to recognize that the California 1970s, now forty years old, have held up far better than their widely heralded counterparts. And they have held up despite accusations of too fat, too obvious, too jammy, won’t age.

Those who forget the lessons of history are bound to repeat it.