Hand Picked Selections in California

With 75% of America’s production, California defines American wine. About 60% of the wine America drinks grows here. The reputation of California wine has soared. Only those unwilling to face reality can deny that the best California wines are as good as any in the world.

So what’s wrong? If the best wines are great, why are so many of the lesser wines so boring?

Industrial Agriculture – A Rant

Depending on varietal, a vineyard intended for fine wine can live for 60 - 100 years. Production during peak years could be up to 4 tons/acre. Even at 100 years, some vineyards can continue to produce up to 2 tons/acre of great fruit.

A majority of California’s vineyards are treated as cash crops. They are planted and farmed for maximum yields in a minimum of time. Irrigated vineyards can yield 10, sometimes 20 tons/acre. By 20 years of age, the vines are exhausted and yields plummet. They are uprooted, the soil is ‘rested’ for a few years and the process is repeated.

Industrial Winemaking – More Rant

Clean fruit cropped at 10 tons an acre arrives at the crusher. It is dosed massively with sulfur to kill any indigenous yeasts. The juice is then inoculated with commercial yeasts designed to assure a quick fermentation yielding a maximum of alcohol.

Once fermentation is over, the wines are racked off of the lees immediately. The lees might impart interesting flavors, but they are dirty and could cause microbial contamination.

The finished wine is aged only in stainless steel or disinfected concrete. These are cheap and assure that nothing untoward will happen to the saleable-by-the-gallon commodity being produced. The wine is then often sold in bulk to huge multi-national drinks companies whose marketing budgets per brand exceed the total income of most artisanal producers.

At bottling, the wine is first subjected to flash pasteurization, followed by sterile filtration. This ensures a bright, stable product with a long shelf life. It also strips any flavor or character that might have survived industrial farming and winemaking.

This is what Hand Picked Selections does not sell and never will.