Grape Expectations

They may lack the grandeur of a Romanee-Conti '59 at $200 a bottle or the finesse of a Chateau Lafite Rothschild '61 (a mere $135). Yet the new California wines now arriving on the market are the best available in quantity. "For the first time in this or any other country," says a California wine-industry consultant, Louis R. Gomberg, "there is going to be a tremendous abundance of high-quality grapes. The consumer will harvest a wine-crop bounty the like of which has never before been seen."

The bottled bounty comes in the form of domestic "varietals"--wines made principally from the grape named on the label. To the averagely educated palate--but not the shrunken purse --they are hard to distinguish from those of Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhine. Selling at $2 or less a fifth, elegantly bottled and labeled, they are the products of more than a decade of intensive experimentation by oenologists and vintners who selected, planted and cosseted the grapes in order to make serious wines nationally available at a good price.

Much of the 153 million gal. of California table wine consumed annually by Americans is made from plebeian grapes grown in California's hot San Joaquin Valley, blended and sold mostly by the jug. The highly cherished European wines, on the other hand--such aristocrats as Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc--are made only from selected clones whose territory and yield are as strictly regulated as a royal household and sell in general for $8 a bottle or more. In fact, vagaries of the European climate make the great vintages as costly as a Patou perfume.

French Cousin. In California, by contrast, with an equable climate, ample acreage and no legal limitation on where any variety of grape may be grown, vintners and chemists have found that they can produce varietal wines fit, if not for a king, at least for kin.

Such venerable California winemakers as Louis Martini, Krug, Heitz and Wente have long marketed excellent varietal wines. But their small northern coastal-county vineyards kept supplies low and prices relatively high. The race to mass-produce varietals began in the valley around 1970; statewide, by 1973 there were almost as many acres of wine vineyards planted but not yet producing (140,000)* as there were acres bearing fruit (150,000).

The most ambitious valley varietal venture was launched a decade ago by the brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo, the industry's biggest but not most celebrated producers. The results could finally be sampled when the firm recently began releasing 200,000 cases of its first varietals on a market earlier entered by such other California wineries as Lamont and Inglenook Navelle. Among the best are three white wines of French ancestry: a dry aromatic Sauvignon Blanc, a smooth pale Chenin Blanc and a Colombard, a rich, fruity wine that is somewhat sweeter than its French cousin. Gallo has also produced several red varietals, including a full-bodied Barbera, similar to the wine grown in Italy's Piedmont. A surprise to many familiar with European varieties is a dry, versatile rose.

Says Harry G. Serlis, president of the Wine Institute, with a touch of nationalist euphoria: "Americans will have wider choice, better value and superior knowledge of wine than most Frenchmen or Italians, who go to their graves knowing only one or two wines."

Gallo alone plans to market 2.4 million bottles this year. There obviously is still gold--white and red and rose--in them thar hills and valleys.

*A vine takes three to seven years to produce marketable grapes.

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