25 years ago, one of the US regional food-wine journalists (Anthony
Spinazzola in Boston, I think) remarked that your average solid, interesting
artisanal California Cabernet was now selling for "seven dollars and
change." These were wines that showed well in in-depth tasting articles
(in food magazines and such respected wine publications as _Vintage_ -- I
just glanced at some of those articles) and were helping to establish
California Cabernets and widen the market for them. (From an old inventory,
1976 Rutherford Hill cost me $6.80, 1976 Jordan $9.64, 1977 Stag's Leap S.
L. V. $8.00, 1977 Dehlinger $7.00, 1977 Raymond $8.21. These prices are not
fully comparable to each other, because some of them had quantity
discounts). Crudely, a factor of four or so for equivalent dollar buying
power would give you in 2004 US money, $25 to $40 for those wines.

They were available to whomever of the public cared to read about them or
ask merchants, and they did not carry anything like the cachet they might
evoke today from later US wine enthusiasts knowing the popularity that some
of those labels developed.

By the way, in the tasting articles I mentioned, consistently, the tasters
or tasting committees who wrote them summarized their recommendations, for
easy consumer guidance, into a few broad categories, just as meats, or
Internet jokes, can be graded Prime/Choice/Good/Utility/Pet. Everyone I've
talked to with serious experience of wine, professional or amateur, seems to
agree at least privately that when you get down to brass tacks, that is
about as fine a recommendation grading as is meaningful, concerning the
substance of the wine experience in the glass. Beyond that, the consumer
really must taste and choose.

Now I have not checked into this much, but I had the impression in the late
90s in the US that a frenzy of fashion for premium California Cabs was
rapidly boosting some prices. I saw labels unheard-of a few years earlier,
being snapped up by people newly obsessed with the subject (and maybe
unaware of the newness of the labels, as they also were unaware of the
oldness of other labels newly hip). But that seems to have moderated after
the economic shocks, and in the last year or two there's talk of high-priced
goods not moving. A general California "lake of wine" at the wholesale
level is finding, sometimes, discreet outlets, as lakes do.

This all leaves me wondering (and not just me), where, or how, are good
values found now in the more serious, well-made, artisanal California cabs,
the the wines that might compare to those at the beginning above, though
maybe a bit more expensive today (as premium wine prices have certainly
outpaced inflation).

-- Max