September 28, 2003
Mike Steinberger had an article on Slate last week about the problems with the California wine culture. I'm certainly familiar with the difficulty of finding a CA wine under $15 that's "merely inoffensive". One reason, apparently:
Napa Valley is the most fabled of California's wine regions, and the attitude-per-hectare there is particularly dense. Owning a Napa vineyard has long been a mark of prestige, but over the past 15 years or so, the area has seen an influx of wannabe wine barons who made their fortunes elsewhere (not least the tech industry) and transferred their alpha instincts to the wine business. This has created a neurotic atmosphere of perennial one-upmanship, in which the goal is not merely to make fine wine, but to make prohibitively expensive, virtually unobtainable wine - to create trophies for other plutocrats.I guess this is part of the phenomenon that has so many folks leaving their jobs to attend culinary school? Or maybe not - maybe it's the sacrifices of those culinary defectors that give them all their charm...
that is interesting about the wannabes. I just watched a special on the Coppolas, saying Francis Ford Coppola bought land to start a vineyard in Napa Valley, but I think that perhaps he actually does well, despite his original profession? One of his bottles is on our restaurant's wine list.
It must be his Italian roots.
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