HOW CALIFORNIA WINE TOOK OVER THE WORLD

John Briscoe’s Crush: The Triumph of California Wine (University of Nevada Press) offers a comprehensive history of how the California wine industry came into being, found its way through a couple of centuries, and proliferated into the enormous field it is today, embracing tastes and wallets that run from “Two-Buck Chuck” (a steal at $1.99 when it was introduced in 2002, if you could keep it down) to, say, an imperial (equivalent to eight bottles) of Screaming Eagle that was auctioned for a half-million dollars in 2000.

In the American West, the cultivation of wine-grapes began in New Mexico “around 1626, planted along the Río Grande at the Mission Socorro,” Briscoe writes, and continued at the missions later established in California. Some early traders passed through New Mexico before making their vinous mark in California; among them was George C. Yount, memorialized through the town of Yountville, a pilgrimage destination along wine-drenched Route 29 in the Napa Valley. At first, California’s commercial wine industry sprouted at Los Angeles and especially at Anaheim — exactly where Disneyland stands today — but it was decimated by a blight in the 1880s. Northern California proved a charm, however, with vineyards sprawling through Sonoma, then Napa and the other valleys that remain the throbbing heart of California wine to this day.

We get acquainted with the visionary pioneers who adapted their experience in their homelands to the demands of a new land: the Hungarian Agoston Haraszthy (who was often on the outs with the law); the Germans Charles Krug, Jacob Gundlach, and Charles Bundschu; the Korbel brothers from Bohemia. Names that still appear on bottles today were already flourishing deep in the 19th century.

California boasts an unusually colorful history, and Briscoe is perhaps overly generous in detailing some signature events — like the Gold Rush of 1849, the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, and Prohibition — before focusing on how they impacted the wine industry, which, in every case, they did in a big way. A downside to the book is that it often reads like an anthology of writings by other authors, with lengthy chunks of texts (assiduously attributed) inserted to tell the story that Briscoe might more effectively have rendered on his own. On the whole, though, it is an impressive compendium of research that leads through the industry’s boom in the 20th century, tracing the impact of such benchmark brands as Gallo and Mondavi, detailing the family feuds among the latter clan. (The Mondavis, he notes, opened the first-ever tasting room, in 1949, thereby spurring the field of oenotourism.) The path leads to the famous “Judgment of Paris,” held in that city in 1976, at which Stag’s Leap cabernet sauvignon (crafted by Warren Winiarski) and Montelena’s chardonnay (by Mike Grgich) — both from California — bested top French red Bordeaux and white Burgundies, sending the wine world into a tizzy.

“Between 1977 and 1981 the number of wineries in Napa Valley more than doubled, from 51 to 110,” Briscoe writes. He charts the continuing growth and evolution since then, in all its shame and glory — white zinfandel, for example, and the rise of boutique establishments and cult wines. The presentation is enlivened by sidebars on wine topics, and a chronology tracing the period 1568 to 2016 provides considerable enlightenment in its own right. — J.M.K.