THE GRAPE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Wine fest celebrates region’s output
Forty-one years and going strong, the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival welcomes back California as its theme region in 2019.
Early sales have been strong, and organizers are expecting a complete sellout as the festival gets underway at several venues across the city beginning Monday.
More than 25,000 consumers are expected to attend the weeklong show in a year when the ever-curious Millennial generation surpasses the Baby Boomers as the largest wine market in America.
For the most part, America remains a conservative wine buying and wine making nation, more likely to buy a Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon than a Chenin Blanc or Grenache.
Chardonnay has been around for a century in California, although it wasn’t until the 1970s that the grape began to be commercially significant, building on the not insignificant arrival of Fred McCrea and his wife Eleanor, who purchased a 160-acre ranch on Spring Mountain (that would become known as Stony Hill) in the 1940s.
The McCreas released the first of their now legendary Stony Hill Chardonnays in 1954 at a cost $21.69 a case, tax and delivery included. Back then, Stony Hill was thought to be a part of the less than 82-hectare strong California Chardonnay world. Today, Chardonnay is ranked No. 1 in California, with 37,800 hectares in the ground.
The second most important planted grape in California — 37,200 hectares in the ground — is Cabernet Sauvignon, although arguably it’s the probably the best-known grape variety globally.
Cabernet Sauvignon was first planted in the 1850s south of San Jose in Santa Clara County, home to the modern-day Silicon Valley. Many of the best-known Cabernets trace their parentage back to three clones known as 07, 08, and 11.
The story goes that the trio came via Château Margaux with Irish immigrant James Concannon, who founded Concannon Vineyard in the Livermore Valley east of San Francisco in 1883. In the 1960s, cuttings from the three clones were brought to the Foundation Plant Services department at the University of California, Davis, where they were replicated as virus-free plants.
By the state’s “Second Golden Age” in the 1970s, most of the Cabernet that went into the ground was 07, 08 and 11. The first vineyard designated Cabernet did not appear on a label until the 1966 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley. When it was released it cost $7 a bottle, some four times the price of the regular Napa Heitz Cabernet Sauvignon. The rest, as they say, is history.
If there is a single word to describe Californian wine it might be generous. Bathed in sunshine most of the year California grapes traditionally come to the winery fully ripe, but the times they are a-changing.
Global warming is having a big impact on the growing season — be it drought, waning water supplies, heavy rainstorms and flash flooding, or terrifying wildfires. Everything already planted and everything vintners have come to know about grape growing is under siege.
Yet, like the old vines that dot the Californian wine landscape, and that have survived for more than a century, there are plenty of new directions being investigated by growers across the state as the industry prepares for an unsettled future.
Few businesses are as adaptable as the wine industry, just ask the any of the principals that are in the city this week pouring their wines from behind their booths.
It should be very interesting to see what the Golden State has to offer in 2019, especially in the way of unique wines that don’t cost a fortune. The latter is a mantra of Millennials, who are as interested in craft beer, cocktails and sparkling water spiked with alcohol as they are in most wines.
It’s not just consumers who get excited about the wine fest, so too do the exhibitors who love to meet you and find out what you are drinking and why.
Over 165 wineries from around the world will be in Vancouver to find out exactly what you are thinking.
We may no longer be a fun or even profitable market to buy and sell wine, but we remain a city of highly educated and curious wine enthusiasts who, when given the opportunity, respond to the latest in wine.
Expect the unexpected, and keep in mind that whether you taste an old favourite or discover something new, sharing your experience is what wine appreciation is all about.
See you inside the room.