We are only a few days away from announcing the finalists in each of the seven American Wine Blog Awards categories. I'm thinking early next week at the latest.
The judges have all informed me that the process of looking through all the nominated blogs has been a great experience for them. While each of them is very familiar with the blog format and wine blogs, none of them had taken the opportunity to delve into the world of wine blogs in such an intense fashion.
I actually visited each and every site nominated prior to sending them off to the judges. I was just looking to make sure they all had the requisite number of posts and that they fell into the correct category. I look at blogs fairly often. But going through them all in a single day was enlightening for me also.
There is great stuff being done in this genre. But there is also room for lots of improvement. And I got lots of ideas for FERMENTATION. Remember, stealing borrowing is a compliment.
That said, look for the finalists in each category to be coming your way very soon and for the voting to begin.
So I'm sitting around a table listening to 
Landmarks.
Last night I sat down in the studios of KRCB-FM for an interview with Michele Anna Jordan, host of 
I was trying to think of a good way to describe the power that the wine wholesalers have accumulated over the years; a good way to indicate the real heft of their influence; a way to demonstrate what happens when the number of middle men shrink in number while suppliers increase; a way to demonstrate the kind of entity that is created when the state mandates monopoly status on a small number of businesses.
For those of us that believe Californian wines have tended toward the overly extracted, alcoholic and bombastic over the past decade or so, there is always the hope that the tide will turn; that the pendulum will swing in the other direction toward more restraint and balance. We are looking for signs.
I've been thinking about the notion of terroir some more and it strikes me that we may have rival paradigms in play when it comes to terroir that make it difficult to achieve a singular "philosophy of terroir".
THE TERROR PARADIGMS
The two terroir paradigms at play seem to be the Old World vs the New World paradigms. The Old World paradigm has its core the ideas that are fully undeveloped in New World wine regions.
Consider Europe where for the most part wines are identified by their place. We drink Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rioja, Champagne. We don't drink Merlot Blends from Bordeaux or Pinot/Chardonnay blends from Champagne. Pinot and Chardonnay ARE Champagne...by law.
This is a very unique way of thinking about wine. But more important, it is a way of thinking about wine that effectively takes "varieties" out of the equation. Unlike in the New World winemaking regions, Old World wine drinkers simply don't talk much about which variety is best suited to the region. That kind of question would be beside the point to a Burgundy drinker. The more important question is what is it about the region that makes this Burgundy taste the way it does.
On the contrary, I've never heard someone ask, "What is it about Russian River Valley that makes Russian River Valley taste the way it does?"
When you can't ask the same questions about wines grown in different regions you are looking then at two different paradigms.
THE CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BASIS FOR THE NEW WORLD TERROR PARADIGM
The New World winemakers, when they think about terroir, are these days debating which variety is best suited to a region. We hear things like, "Carneros is best suited for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir" or "Marin County wine growers are discovering that Riesling might be the best variety for that terroir". One might argue that this is a less mature way, or a less mature paradigm, for examining terroir. But it is not. It is a way of looking at terroir that is dictated, I think, by an altogether different national culture and ideology.
It seems very unlikely to me that any American-based regulatory body will ever dictate which varieties must be used in a wine in order to place a particular appellation on that wine. Before this could even be considered seriously we'd have to have a winegrowing region where the fortunes of the majority of winemakers were so completely tied to a particular variety that the idea of a wine being produced with that appellation on it that also was not made from this dominant varietal would have to be considered a significant economic threat to the integrity of the region.
You might argue that such a situation is developing in Napa Valley where Cabernet is increasingly dominating the vineyards and wines. Still, this situation, I don't think, could ever develop to the level that the economic considerations of monovarietal winemaking region would over come the libertarian inclination of the American culture and people. Such a development could only occur in a future America in which our entrepreneurial and libertarian inclinations had been so undermined by economic based fears brought on by a paranoia that regulations of this type appeared to be the only way to preserve localized industry.
The collectivist attitude and culture that exists in the Old World, however, allows regulations of the type that would never exist in America. Yet, I don't think this means we will never see a paradigm shift among New World and American winemakers that would allow us to understand terroir from the same perspective, or from within the same paradigm, as the Old World Winemakers understand terroir.
MOVING FROM VARIETAL PARADIGM TO PLACE PARADIGM
The pace of change among American winemakers and grapegrowers is leading them down a path that has them determining with some finality which varieties are best suited for particular regions. The regions tend to be defined by the boundaries of the federally determined AVAs but not in every case. For example, there are non-designated sub-regions of the Carneros region that are viewed as best suited for Merlot. Nevertheless, the main pursuit now is determining what grows best where.
Sometime in the near future this issue will be decided and the real substance of the American Terroir Paradigm will emerge: What characteristics of a Russian River Pinot or Russian River Chardonnay or a Russian River Zinfandel can the consumer expect? When this becomes the dominant question we will, in the New World, find ourselves asking very similar questions to those asked in the Old World about Terroir. We will simply have more questions to ask.
These are generalizations about the current state of the terroir debate that takes into account two generalized terroir paradigms. It should be noted however that in some cases Americans and Old Worlders do currently look at terroir from within the same paradigm.
THE SINGLE VINEYARD LEAP
Single vineyard bottlings have exploded within the American wine making world over the past decade. Because these single vineyards tend to be planted to a single or two varieties we are evaluating the wines made from them on the same basis that Old Worlders evaluate their Burgundies, with the acknowledgment that a single vineyard bottling (or old world appellation) assumes one or two varieties are at the foundation of the wines. When we talk about wines from the Allen Vineyard or Martha's Vineyard or Hayne Vineyard we know we are talking about wines of a particular variety and, more important, what that particular plot of ground will deliver to the wine that carries its name. This is a very "old world" concept; a very "old world paradigm" for understanding terroir and wine.
Finally, one more observation on Terroir Paradigms. The idea of understanding wine from the perspective of Place is something that the average, say, French wine drinker embraces with very little effort. It's an idea that is part and parcel of the wine buying and wine drinking experience. Even those who know little about wine drink it with a near unconscious understanding of the Old World Terroir paradigm.
Yet in America, even the idea of varieties being linked to certain regions (The American Terroir paradigm) is a near wholly undeveloped idea among the average drinker. This is the factor that leads me to believe that while sophisticated drinkers in America are starting to link varieties with place, it will be well beyond my lifetime before the average consumer understands that Green Valley Pinot Noir has a certain characteristic different from Santa Lucia Highlands.
And yet, to insure the growing interest in wine remains growing, it is critical that America's wine educators always attempt to drive home the idea of variety linked to place and even the idea that varieties planted in different places deliver different characteristics that can make the exploration of wine a lifelong and never ending pleasure. This, it seems to me, is the primary job of the American wine educators.