Jamie Goode reviews Jon Bonné's The New California Wine

A guest post from award-winning wine writer Jamie Goode who gives his own personal take on Jon Bonné's The New California Wine and the issues it raises.

"Jon Bonné, a native New Yorker, was hired in 2006 by the San Franciso Chronicle to cover California wine. Bonné’, whose father was a trained chef, had grown up with wine, and in particular imported wines from the classic European wine regions. 'I showed up somewhat sceptical about the wines of California,' he says, considering them largely to be expensive and monotonous'.

But, he says, California wine hasn’t always been bad. According to Bonné the first modern revolution in Californian wine occurred 40 years ago. Famed winegrowers such as Paul Draper, Warren Winarski and Robert Mondavi were the figureheads of a transformation of Californian wine that spanned the late-1960s, the 1970s and even the early 1980s.

'By the time I got to California,' he says, 'it had reached its decadent phase, and what had happened in the 1970s had evolved into something different.' It wasn't just that the wines had got riper, but also that they had moved to what he calls ‘pure impact’ in style. 'The industry says they were making wines that people liked to drink, but this was a cop-out.'

What went wrong? Around the late 1980s and early 1990s a lot of money was flowing into Napa. 'People loved the fact that wine was becoming an American thing,' says Bonné, and this led to a big injection of cash and ambition.’ This coincided with the last major round of phylloxera in the 1980s, which led to a billion dollar replanting program that hit the reset button in Californian viticulture. Lots of the big, ripe Cabs that came to define high-end California came from young vineyards, which have a tendency to produce fleshy, charming styles of wine.

Also, there were many consumers who were new to wine, and this led to a rise of a system that gave them straightforward guidance as to which were the best. Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate and the big-selling lifestyle-ish magazine Wine Spectator both offered scores that pointed people to the 'top' wines. 'All the things that had been barriers to entry to the fine wine market were gone,' says Bonné, and there was lots of disposable income ready to be plunged into wine.

So, in the course of a decade, beginning in 1990, the style of Californian wine changed dramatically. 'It became clear, critically speaking, that if you made wine in a riper style you would be rewarded, but if you made it in any other style you would be called for it and punished,' he asserts.

So Bonné arrived in California as a sceptic. To what must have been his great relief, though, he began to encounter interesting producers, making wines that didn't conform to the California mould. He began by speaking to people like Paul Draper at Ridge, Josh Jensen at Calera, and Abe Schoener at the Scholium Project. 'In Abe I saw a spirit of enquiry that had largely been missing in California,' he recalls.

He also met Steve Matthiasson, who by day was a top Napa viticulturist, but whose own passion was making a white blend based on his love for the wines of Friuli. Bonné began to connect with the 'New California', and by 2010 it became evident that this wasn't simply a few people nibbling around the edges, but that the conversation about wine in California was beginning to change. 'Wines were appearing that were completely different interpretations of places people knew.'

Bonné decided that a revolution was occurring that was as significant as the one that took place 40 years ago, and this prompted him to write The New California Wine. It seems to be the right book at just the right time: a manifesto for a growing band of like-minded producers to gather around.

The big question is whether what is occurring now is actually a course correction for Californian wine, or a sign of an emerging diversity? Will the big, ripe critic wines still thrive, alongside a growing set of more interesting wines that show balance and sense of place?

Bonné's book is a snapshot of what's going on in terms of this Californian wine revolution. He describes some of the emerging regions, and profiles the interesting producers who are making wines of balance and sense of place, made in a more sensitive way with an emphasis on allowing the vineyard to express itself more than the heavy hand of the winemaker. I love it, just as I am a fan of the new, balanced wines made by the producers described in its pages.

And my take? I think that for now, although I’d love the New California to be the beginning of a sea change for all of the state’s wines, I think this remains a niche movement, albeit one that is gaining momentum. California is still largely defined by ripe, sweetly fruited wines, whether they be cheap sugared-up examples from the Central Valley, or rather grotesque over-ripe and over-priced high-end bottles from the Napa Valley. I wish this were not the case, but the criticism that the New California wines have had from the major US wine publications shows that plenty of people in the USA like their wines supersized and sweet, and aren’t ready for wines that express elegance, precision and detail at the expense of size and ripeness.

The controversy that the New California, and the similar In Pursuit of Balance (IPOB) organization – whose tasting I recently attended in San Francisco – are stirring up in the USA shows that the ripeness (and related high alcohol) issue is a fault line in the Californian wine scene.

From my perspective, I am fully on the side of IPOB. The major US critics don’t seem to like IPOB, because it acts as a mirror showing how misguided (in the views of many) their judgements on the now dominant riper style of California wines has been. It would require a sharp turn in direction for them to recognize that the IPOB/New California wines are really where it’s at for interesting, compelling, fine Californian wines, and this would require a certain admission of failure on their part. This isn’t going to happen. So they are caught in a dead end – and many of their readers have filled their cellars with high alcohol, dead fruit wines – and there’s no easy way out. Hence the acrimony.

Are all the New California wines wonderful? No: picking earlier to make lower alcohol wines doesn’t always make for greatness, if it’s something your terroir won’t give you. There are a few lemon juice Chardonnays that don’t really have much character. But having said this, the vast majority of New California wines are brilliant. I was blown away by the IPOB tasting in San Francisco, and the offerings displayed at the New California event in London recently at which Jon Bonné spoke. This movement is a welcome correction of the sins of the past, and it is turning California into a great wine destination, once again, as long as you are selective in who you visit.

Jamie Goode is the author of Wine Science (published as The Science of Wine in the US) and publishes his own website and blog wineanorak.com. The New California Wine by Jon Bonné is published by Ten Speed Press.

This month you can win a copy of The New California Wine, along with a case of wines from producers that are mentioned in the book from Roberson Wine and a voucher for Sager & Wilde, the east London wine bar that regularly features them. Enter here.

Book review: Leon Fast Vegetarian

Having eaten Jane Baxter’s food on a number of occasions I was really looking forward to the publication of Leon Fast Vegetarian, the book she’s just written with Leon founder Henry Dimbleby, one of a series of books that has been published by the Leon chain.

Jane used to work at the Riverford Kitchen in Devon and I’ve frequently dipped in to the two books she’s written for them, The Riverford Farm Cook Book and Everyday and Sunday: recipes from Riverford Farm. Although she’s a chef she’s a really great home cook with an intuitive feel for how ingredients work together.

This is a slightly bigger book, divided by types of meal (breakfast & brunch, pasta, grains & pulses, rice & curry ...) rather than ingredients or seasons. As well as Jane’s own recipes there are contributions from co-author Henry Dimbleby and some nice guest recipes from family and friends, Henry’s mum Josceline Dimbleby and restaurant critic Giles Coren among them. Plenty would be suitable for kids - it’s very much a family cookbook.

There were a lot of recipes I wanted to make from the book but settled on three:

The first, as I was somewhat obsessed with a deep fried cauliflower I’d had in Paris, was a whole roast cauliflower with a caper and golden raisin dressing though not being able to find golden raisins I used ordinary ones instead. The taste was great (it also involved lashings of butter and smoked paprika) but the cauliflower a little undercooked even after giving it extra time. I blame the Aga but might possibly think of blanching it first another time to get it cooked right through (I reckon they did that in Paris). It makes a fantastic centrepiece for the table - I can imagine it with roast pork if you’re not a veggie.

The next was a spinach, squash and blue cheese bake because I had some Stilton and double cream to use up. All it needed in addition was some butternut squash and spinach (although I reckon I could have substituted chard), some fresh sage (I used dried) and some walnuts for which I substituted pistachios. A really good dish with a lovely balance of flavours though for four rather than the suggested 4-6 unless there were several other dishes on the table. Cooking it at a low temperature to set the custard gave it an indulgently smooth silky texture.

The third recipe - and an absolute triumph which I’ll definitely make again - was a Little Gem and egg salad which had the best vegetarian substitute for a caesar dressing I’ve ever tasted. Again I had to make a substitution. Having neither pernod or anisette I used a tsp of fennel seeds crushed with about 2/3 of a teaspoon of Maldon salt. I added it cautiously and found just over half that amount was enough to get the aniseed flavour I imagine Jane was looking for. The dressing also contains hummus, Dijon mustard and soy sauce among other ingredients. Goodness knows how she came up with that combination but it’s an absolute winner. You could, she suggests add some croutons to the salad too.

Other recipes I’ve earmarked to try include fennel, radish and broad bean salad, orecchiette with peas and spinach, Puglian bean purée (Jane spends a lot of time in Italy), green bean and cashew curry and stir-fried spiced spring greens. I also love ‘the Snickety Corner’ - a quirky line-up of fridge snacks and there’s a great selection of sides. Some nice desserts too though they aren’t the main point of the book. I definitely fancy the parsnip, cashew and coconut cake and you can find Jane's rhubarb and strawberry crumble sundae here.

The one drawback of the book is that while the recipes are simple, justifying the title Fast Vegetarian, the sourcing of the ingredients isn’t necessarily as straightforward. Even living in a city and with a relatively well-stocked storecupboard there were ingredients I found hard to track down. A garden - or even a couple of herb boxes - would certainly help and are encouraged at the start of the book.

And while there are helpful tips at the bottom of each recipe and a very useful ‘Happy Families' section which tells you how you can substitute one vegetable for another you need a bit of experience to get the best out of the book.

That said the recipes I tried were bold, delicious and inspiring. I’ll definitely be dipping into them again.

Buy Leon Fast Vegetarian if:

* you’re a vegetarian, obviously, but even if you aren’t and want to introduce more vegetarian food into your diet

* you get a veg box and need inspiration as to what to do with it, though Jane’s other books (see above) would also help

* you’re a keen cook with a well-stocked storecupboard

* you have reasonably adventurous kids - or kids you want to eat more vegetables.

A Change of Appetite - but what if your beloved doesn't want to change?

I can’t tell you how excited I was about A Change of Appetite. To the extent that, impatient with the review copy not having arrived I dragged myself on a fruitless visit to Waitrose to buy it then drove down to Bristol City centre. On a Saturday afternoon. (Locals will know this how insane this is.)

The only thing I didn’t allow for is that my husband might not want to change his appetite too . . .

Back to the beginning. Change of Appetite is award-winning author Diana Henry’s eighth book. They’ve all won ridiculous numbers of awards so much so that you look at a shortlist and think 'Not Diana Henry again!' But dammit, she deserves it.

The reason she keeps on winning is that in addition to coming up with brilliant recipes she’s also a fine writer with the knack of making it sound like she’s talking to you but also of infusing her recipes with such passion and poetry that you just can’t wait to get into the kitchen and try them.

Past books include the inspiring Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons, Salt Sugar Smoke and Food from Plenty but in this book she’s decided to focus on healthy food. And this is where the problems started. My husband has not the faintest interest in eating more healthily or of departing from his normal register of bourgeois French and Italian cooking.

I tried four recipes all of which I could tell he’d made up his mind he wasn’t going to enjoy. (If this makes him sound like a fogey he isn’t - his taste in music and books for example is far more adventurous and electic than mine but, to coin a phrase, ‘he knows what he likes’.)

The first recipe I tried, burmese chilli fish with a hot and sour salad was infuriatingly the least successful of the four due to the fact that I used only about a third of the fish for the two of us (750g seemed like a lot of fish for four). Never a good idea to second guess the author. It made the turmeric which I’d only scaled down by half too dominant but I loved the bright zingy flavours of the hot and sour salad. My OH less so.

He also took against the fabulously sticky chicken and fennel with honey mustard and orange as being too sweet - my fault again for not making the accompanying black and white pilaf which contains bitter watercress to balance the honey's sweetness. An easy midweek dish, as Diana says. I thought it was really tasty. I imagine kids would too.

The other two thankfully went down better. A very simple and imaginative dish of purple sprouting broccoli, ricotta and parmesan with lemon (above) - a lovely way to serve PSB and an unusual and again very easy white fish, saffron and dill couscous pilaf (below) which I’ll definitely be making again (preferably when my OH is out).

Other recipes I’ve bookmarked are the Japanese rice bowl, Japanese ginger and garlic chicken with smashed cucumber, warm salad of pink grapefruit, prawns and toasted coconut and lamb scottadito with summer fregola (the recipes are divided up by season). Oh, and braised venison with beetroot and horseradish because I bought some great looking venison from the butcher we visited for the BBC Food & Farming awards the other day. I reckon even my OH would like that.

Although I’m in love with this book I have a couple of minor quibbles. One is that as with Ottolenghti (who is a fan) some recipes feature quite a lot of hard to source ingredients - although Diana always gives alternatives. Even in Bristol I had difficulty finding some of them and I was well-motivated to track them down. And it would be useful if some of the recipes had been for two - maybe the simpler ones. A lot of people wouldn't necessarily be sharing the dishes with friends and family and scaling down isn’t always easy.

As I’ve mentioned before I always think cookbooks have a target audience. The same book isn’t going to suit everybody. So here’s who I think it would appeal to - and who would possibly find it less useful

Buy A Change of Appetite if

* you genuinely want to give your cooking a healthy makeover and incorporate more fruit, vegetables and fish in your diet

* you're drawn to light bright flavours. If you’re an Ottolenghi fan you’ll love it

* you read cookbooks obsessively in bed. This will give hours of pleasure

* you're into food porn - the photos, by Laura Edwards, are quite glorious

Don’t buy it if

* you refuse to eat anything other than French bistro food

* you’re an inexperienced cook (while the recipes are not difficult they’re not really for beginners)

* you haven’t got a well-stocked store-cupboard or the budget to acquire extra ingredients and seasonings

But buy it for someone else . . .

A Change of Appetite is published by Mitchell Beazley at £25.

World Atlas of Wine 7th edition - hardback or iPad?

Regular contributor Lucy Bridgers, who is in the unusual position of having worked on the World Atlas of Wine herself takes a comprehensive look at the latest edition and considers whether you should buy it in book or electronic form.

Lucy writes: "Now in its seventh edition and after 42 years, this classic reference work has undergone a new lease of life. Publishers Mitchell Beazley are also offering it as an e-book for the iPad – a much more practical option instead of carting this tome around foreign wine regions. A number of years ago I worked for Mitchell Beazley and recall when the Wine Touring Guides were launched to make more practical use of the maps. The e-book is a logical extension of this idea.

For me personally, the World Atlas of Wine has been an important professional tool, as well as a satisfying read. I love maps, so I’m completely biased on that front. The authors are absolutely correct in declaring that wine is a geographical subject and that each wine is an expression of a place.

I have been working in wine since 1991, so have seen the Atlas evolve quite dramatically during the past two decades. I also had some experience working behind the scenes on the book when Jancis Robinson first came on board as co-author in 2001 shortly before I moved away from wine book publishing. It’s an almighty task and no surprise that it’s only been possible to produce it at regular intervals with two authors at the helm and an experienced team supporting them. Four editions appeared between 1971 and 1994, whereas a further three editions have been published at regular intervals since 2001.

However, what’s different about the seventh edition? Firstly, on a purely aesthetic level, the design is clear and crisp. The font is more streamlined and elegant than that used in the sixth edition (2007), which had more of a retro feel overall, making it look like an older edition on my bookshelf. Not helpful. The new edition contains a lot of new artwork and the choice of photography really helps bring the subject to life. The pictures look particularly vivid on the iPad version, being backlit, allowing you to really feast your eyes. A nice touch is how some pictures and captions help emphasise the history and heritage of certain wine regions. A picture of the recently renovated Seppeltsfield winery in the Barossa Valley is a good example.

In the printed book, the text is laid out more accessibly as, compared with earlier editions, subheads are frequently used, pulling out the more salient points. Another useful new feature is something that accompanies most maps: a short paragraph summarising the region or country in a few key points.

The text has been comprehensively reworked. A decent proportion of it has been updated and where this hasn’t been necessary, it has been refreshed and the writing styles of the two authors work in a complimentary way. Most of it appears to be Jancis Robinson’s clear, academic treatment, punctuated by Hugh Johnson’s more lyrical flourishes: in the introduction to France the country is described as ‘washed by the Atlantic and lapped by the Mediterranean’ (definitely more HJ in tone than JR, though I could be wrong).

In terms of new material, the book has been comprehensively updated. The France chapter has a couple of noteworthy additions: a map of Richebourg showing how ownership of the cru is divided between several different growers, and there is a map of the soils of Châteauneuf-du-Pape that will keep terroirists happy. Italy benefits from a new map of Etna (but more about Italy below).

The dynamism of the Ibernian peninsula is reflected with new maps: Inland Northwest Spain (Bierzo, Ribeira Sacra, Ribeiro and Valdeorras), the Toro map has been expanded to include part of Rueda, whereas Somantano has been dropped. In Portugal Vinho Verde and Douro Superiore are mapped. The steady renaissance of Eastern Europe has led to greater coverage, especially Slovenia, Croatia and Georgia, and Turkey now merits its own page.

Scholarly treatment of Germany continues with two new maps: Kaiserstuhl and Breisgau, and Wonnegau (Rheinhessen) given the increasing importance of reds and dry whites. The spotlight also falls on Austria’s Northeast Mittelburgenland for the first time in recognition of the region’s Blaufränkisch based reds. The authors’ passion for these countries remains undimmed.

Away from Europe, Northern America has been reordered with Canada receiving expanded coverage. Columbia Valley in Washington has been extended to the north to include Ancient Lakes AVA. Walla Walla Valley has a new slightly enlarged map that seems a bit unnecessary, other than to locate recommended producers more clearly. California has also been augmented: Northern Sonoma now includes Sonoma Coast and Fort Ross-Seaview AVAs, and the Santa Barbara area is enhanced by a detailed map of Santa Rita Hills and Happy Canyon AVAs.

To quote the introduction to North America in the 6^th edition, ‘the eastern state that, after New York, offers the most excitement today is unquestionably Virginia’. Since then this state has leapt from six lines’ coverage to a double page spread and map. The two most important AVAs are plotted: Monticello and Middleburg Virginia. New York and Canada’s coverage has doubled to two pages each, with new maps of Okanagan Valley in British Columbia and the Finger Lakes in detail. Elsewhere in Northern America, the Southwest States and Mexico have been divided up, mapping the southern strip between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico and separately, Guadalupe Valley in detail.

In the South America chapter, the maps of Chile have been combined and reoriented, running across the page and Argentina features a new map of the Calchaqui Valley near Salta, noted for its Torrontés.

Australia’s updated coverage reflects the shift towards cooler areas and use of a broader range of grape varieties. The growing interest in site specific wines is reflected by the presence of more ‘noted vineyards’ on the maps (which are likely to become official subregions). A map of Mornington Peninsular is a welcome addition, along with a new more detailed map of Tasmania.

Most dramatically Asia has gone from receiving no coverage in the 4^th edition (2001) to now having 5 pages (a new page for this edition and new maps of Northern Ningxia in China and Japan’s Yamanashi region. More predictably coverage of New Zealand has grown from 2 pages in the 4th edition and 6 pages in the 6th edition to 8 pages in the 7th) with a new map of Awatere Valley and Canterbury/Waipara. The South Africa chapter has also expanded (4 pages: 4th and 5th editions, 6 pages: 6th edition and now 7 pages) with new maps of Swartland and Cape South Coast.Christmas book selection.

Throughout the book more information is included on the maps, especially regarding notable vineyards (particularly so in updated maps of Beaujolais and Australian regions). Visually, colour coding of wine regions on maps looks brighter and clearer so that key areas stand out. Unfortunately, too few country maps are shaded to show the country’s topography (and, for example, New Zealand’s has been removed for the 7^th edition). However, on the general country map of Italy, the shading has been intensified, making the landscape look appropriately dramatic. Readers should be able to appreciate the shape of a country’s landscape at a glance as it literally shapes wine production.

To seasoned readers of the Atlas, some of the maps are now looking tired and some, like Italy’s especially, remain challenging as so many wine DOCs and DOCGs overlap in the same regions giving a ‘spaghetti’ effect. The Umbria map (below) and Northern Lazio one now have different coloured shading and is so much easier on the eye. Perhaps this can be extended to other Italian maps to highlight the most important wines.

On the iPad version the older maps have a lower resolution than newer maps which respond much better when they are enlarged (ie they remain in focus). For the current Google Maps generation, this could be offputting. Another issue is that sometimes when a place is referred to in the text, it cannot be readily found on the map. In one instance I had to search for it on Google Maps. The smaller size of an iPad screen means that the pages are scaled down and you scroll through the text, rather than read across spreads. The design of the print version has more impact visually and a printed book is obviously easier to use (if you’ve got luddite tendencies) – you need to get used to navigating the iPad version.

Editorially, what is impressive is that the extent of the book remains 400 pages in its print format. In order to incorporate all the new material there have been a number of judicious deletions that include the North Africa map that has for now been ‘mothballed’ and the street maps of Beaune, Reims, Epernay, Vila Nova de Gaia and Jerez. French Vins de Pays and IGPs have been included in the large map of France, making a separate map unnecessary. It’s fair to say that the Managing Editor, Gill Pitts, has done a remarkable job.

Finally, going through this latest edition, you can’t help but wonder whether there have been any omissions and what will merit more detailed treatment in future. Personally, I think if Etna deserves its own map, so do Naoussa and Santorini in Greece. The Agly Valley in Roussillon is currently an exciting hotbed of activity and the authors hint that next time round this will be included too.

So, should you buy it? Most certainly yes, and ideally in both formats: keep the book at home on the shelf and have the iPad version handy while travelling.

The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson is published by Mitchell Beazley at £40 though you can buy it at £30.10 from Waterstones and even less from Amazon, if you must. The iPad edition is £19.99 or £14.99 currently on iTunes - a bargain by any standard FB