California lightens up: three of its most drinkable wines

Lo-Fi Gamay Noir, Santa Barbara County, 2018 (£25, Les Caves) It took me a long time to set aside my preconceptions and give Californian wine a fair chance. In my defence, California’s vintners (as they insisted on calling themselves while the rest of the world seemed happy with winegrower or producer) had been doing a good job of feeding my prejudice. Over the years, they’d given the world some of its least appetising yet inexplicably high-selling brands and some of its most ludicrously overpriced and pretentious ‘fine’ wines – the latter made in an overblown style that made them the vinous equivalent of a gas-guzzling SUV. But the past decade has seen another side of the state rise to prominence, a side well represented by the unforced, fluent, natural-tasting drinkability of Lo-Fi’s take on Beaujolais’ red gamay grape.

Giornata Fiano, Paso Robles, 2018 (£19.89, All About Wine) As befitting a state that is larger than most European countries, California has started to get to grips with the diversity of its growing conditions, with a much greater range of grape varieties to match. At a recent tasting of more than 150 Californian wines put on by wine trade magazine the Wine Merchant in London, for example, there were still plenty of wines made from the traditional big gun regions (Napa, Sonoma) and varieties (cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, zinfandel, pinot noir), but also convincing wines made from a range of southern European varieties, such as an Italian pair from Brian and Stephanie Terrizzi’s Giornata project in Paso Robles: the tangy-plummy red Barbera (£19.99, All About Wine) and the pristine, stony-peachy dry white Fiano.

Showdown Man With the Ax Cabernet, Central Valley, 2017 (£9.50, WoodWinters) Other varieties that have found a home from home in California include grenache – which is notably supple, lucid and red-fruited in a wine made from 100-year-old vines, Birichino Besson Grenache, Old Vines, Vignes Centenaires, Central Coast 2018 (£28, Vinoteca) – and Spain’s albariño, beguilingly racy and floral in Ferdinand Wines Albariño, Lodi 2018 (£26.99, Handford). For those looking for a more classical Californian grape variety, I enjoyed the nutty, creamy Cuvaison Estate Chardonnay, Carneros 2016 (£27.50, Tanners) and two cabernet sauvignons: the restrained, elegant, pure black cherry of Varner Wines Foxglove Cabernet Sauvignon, Paso Robles 2017 (£20.75, Stannary) and the vivacious, succulent Man With the Ax, which provides a rare incidence of sub-£10 Californian drinkability.

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