Confessions of a former California Cabernet drinker

I must confess, I have been a drinker of California wines, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon, for almost 30 years. That is to say, I have been with California wines through good times and bad. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Napa Valley wine makers would drag you into their wineries to taste their wine, and sometimes they had to block the door to keep you from leaving.

Times have changed.

Now, California wine is better, and you stand in line to get into some wineries. The wine industry has become big business, generating almost $20 billion a year in California. Vineyard land in Napa Valley sells for more than $150,000 per acre, and you have to be a rock star to afford good California wine.

Two things brought the rising cost of California wine into focus for me. The first was a recent issue of Wine Spectator. In their recent Cabernet Sauvignon issue, the magazine editors rated 500 California Cabernets, mostly from the 2004 vintage. For these 500 wines, the average price was almost $70 and the average rating was less than 87 points! That is almost twice the annual subscription price of Wine Spectator for a bottle of wine that is just average by their rating!

The second was at our first WineEnabler.com wine tasting. We tasted 6 bottles of wine for under $15, and I decided to open a bottle of California Cabernet from the cellar. The wine had been rated 94 points by Wine Spectator, and I had bought it for less than $50 several years ago. The wine was good, but showing some fatigue from its time in the bottle. I would say that today it would get about an 89-90 point rating. And based on today’s prices, that would mean it would sell for at least $100!

While it was a good bottle, I will not be replacing it with another California Cabernet. Instead, I will look for Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington, Shiraz from Australia, or Malbec from Argentina. There are many exceptional wines from these regions, and many of them don’t cost the equivalent of a day’s pay. I will miss my old friend from California, but sometimes even the best of friends grow apart.

Check out these related posts:

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2. Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2008
3. Why are wine prices higher in Texas than in New York or California?
4. Sit, stay, sip — Pound Hound 2005 California Red Wine
5. Recession anti-depression! Great value California Riesling and Italian red wines