In this episode focused on regional comparisons of California and the world, Wine writer + expert Elaine Chukan Brown speaks with Oz Clarke, wine writer, presenter, and broadcaster and Richard Siddle, business and media consultant and editor at The Buyer. What’s the current state of California wine in the UK? How have perceptions changed in recent years? Elaine, Oz, and Richard take a look at California wine from the outside in, focusing specifically on perspectives from one of the world’s largest wine markets.
Written by Jancis Robinson MW.
California wine has played a huge part in my life. The first article I had published in a national newspaper was a report on the French giant Moët-Hennessy’s move into Napa Valley via Domaine Chandon published by The Sunday Times of London in the mid-1970s. A few years later I was to meet my husband of 40 years Nick Lander at a tasting of California wine in the American embassy in London. I organised this tasting, at a time when the dollar-to-pound rate was favourable to UK importers of California wine, and many were jumping on the bandwagon. This was in my role as secretary of the Zinfandel Club, an organisation founded by the likes of my friend and co-author of The World Atlas of Wine Hugh Johnson to introduce British wine lovers to the delights of wine from California, the first non-European wine region to make a serious impact on Europe’s wine lovers.
