‘New California Wine’ is a must-read

(WP) - As wine editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Bonné is the leading voice in a general-interest publication covering the heart of the California wine industry. He’s also controversial, for he has been one of California wine’s harshest critics.

In “The New California Wine: A Guide to the Producers and Wines Behind a Revolution in Taste,” published in November by Ten Speed Press, Bonné argues that California’s wine industry has been on the wrong path for more than two decades, pursuing bigger, riper wines and higher point scores from critics at the expense of the character that made California wines great in the first place.

“Again and again I was disappointed by what I found to be the shortfalls of California wine: a ubiquity of oaky, uninspired bottles and a presumption that bigger was indeed better,” he writes.

Bonné is not the only prominent writer to criticize the prevalent style of California wine. Eric Asimov of the New York Times champions winemakers who strive for a more elegant, lower-alcohol style of wine, and I have sounded similar themes in this column. Bonné, however, is harder to ignore because of his base in San Francisco. Many in the wine industry regard him as a pest.

Bonné writes of the suspicion that greeted him, a New Yorker, when he arrived in San Francisco in 2006. Resentment still echoes today. “He’s anti-California,” one prominent Napa winery executive sniffed to me recently, explaining why he refused to read Bonné’s book.