California grows wine along nearly the whole length of the state, and the differences between one stretch and the next are not subtle. A Cabernet grown on the gravel of the Napa Valley floor and one grown in the granite of the Sierra Foothills are separated by ninety miles and by almost everything else.
What decides it is mostly cold air. The Pacific sits offshore at around 55 degrees; wherever a gap in the Coast Range lets that air inland, the growing season stretches out and the wines keep their acidity. Where the hills close ranks, the fruit ripens fast and the wines come out broader. Most of what follows is a variation on that one theme.
Celebrations Wine Club shipped California wine for twenty-five years and profiled a different producer every month. Those write-ups are still here: the California winery archive runs from 2010 to 2019, and the California Wine Club page records how the series were put together.
