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California Wines
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Thank you for visiting California Wines. We try to provide you with the most complete information we can about how to use wine with food. If you have recipes to contribute, please do and we will give you credit if you wish. We update our sources constantly. Please scroll down to learn more.
California Wines
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The problem and the virtue of California wines is cross pollination. This makes California wines totally different from those of Europe where vines are restricted to particular areas (DOCs). The lack of control in the U.S. meant the winemakers were free to combine and experiment with clones to produce wines that are both unique and pleasing to the palate.
For example, French winemakers who examined California's Petite Sirah plantings in the 1970s told the growers that what they had was definitely not Sirah, but rather a combination of grapes, mainly Durif or "Duriff", an unpopular variety grown in tiny quantities in the Midi of southeastern France.
How did this happen? Because we have a hundred years or more of cross pollination in California vineyards using Zinfandel, Cabernets, Carignane and Merlots to produce wines that pleasured the vintner and ultimately the consumer.
In fact, research at the University of California, Davis, indicates that at least three entirely different varietals are going by the name Petite Sirah. The identities were determined by DNA testing. It is now known that of the five accessions of 'Petite Sirah' in U.C. Davis' own vineyards, one may be Duriff, while the other two are definitely not Duriff. Similar findings have been discovered in commercial Petite Sirah vineyards.
The confusion gets a little deeper when a U.S. winery chooses to spell Sirah as "Sirah." because they believe the spelling will be more distinctive to the consumer.
Zinfandel - a Unique American Wine
The basis on Zinfandel is a story in itself. In the 19th Century the California Legislature commissioned a man to go to Europe and collect vines to star a wine industry. He went to Europe for four years and guess what. When he came back, they refused to pay him. So he stood at the dock and gave out the vines to whoever wanted them and one of the vines became what we now call Zinfandel.
For years no one knew where the wine came from. However, DNA testing has shown that its main ancestor was an obscure grape from Croatia, which is rarely grown in Europe. We are fortunate that it has no historical stylistic context elsewhere in the world. Few New World wine regions have had the opportunity to create a new great wine. With other varieties, we have constantly compared our efforts to European standards. Zinfandel gave us the unparalleled opportunity to create a unique world-class wine through cross pollination.
Numerous old Zinfandel vineyards in California survived Prohibition and many date back to the late 1890s. The Heritage Vineyard at U Cal has an unusual and unprecedented collection of 90 rare and 'famous' Zinfandel vine cuttings, all at least 60 years old from all over California. They were specifically chosen by the researchers because they were known to produce unique and high quality wines.
The Heritage Vineyard is an ongoing museum of the grape. It will establish a body of information about Zinfandel that will support the quality of Zinfandel grown in the future.
