Italian-style winemaking in California: the top bottles to seek out

The Italian influence on California winemaking runs deep and spreads wide; from land to winery, terroir to taste, production to marketing. The sonorous Italian family and grape names have eased themselves into the Californian lexicon as easily and ubiquitously as their cuisine.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 17 top Italian-style Californian wines

Italians were among the first European settlers in California, spreading evenly south to north and involved in religious orders and the fishing communities. They navigated the Gold Rush by providing services to the mining communities, forging fortunes by establishing banks, controlling politics, offering nourishment, both for the body – in the form of fish and agricultural produce – and the soul, through theatre and opera.

Successful integration and assimilation were key. The Italian settlers becoming instigators of progress has benefited California at large – and especially the wine industry.

California offers a climate suitable to sustain viticulture, with landscapes as varied, and soils as fragmented and as rich in potential as Italy’s original oenotria. Such a landscape was bound to attract the first settlers and farmers, just as it continues to sustain new generations today.

The Early Days

The Italian Swiss Colony, established in 1881 in Asti, Sonoma County, to give Swiss and Italian immigrants a leg up on the wine ladder, quickly became one of the most important wine brands from California.

Many immigrants purchased or planted vineyards, some of which have become synonymous with absolute quality, the fruit now sourced assiduously by winemakers in search of site, varietal and self-expression.

Such vineyards include the Dusi vineyard in Paso Robles, planted to Zinfandel by Dante Dusi and his brothers in 1945. The Monte Rosso vineyard in the Mayacamas, named after its red volcanic soil by Louis M Martini when he purchased the land in 1938, produces a supremely elegant and bold Cabernet to this day. The Sangiacomo family, originating from Genoa in the northwest and farmers for generations, now owns about 650ha, comprising 15 different vineyards across Sonoma County, all partitioned into blocks and farmed individually.

In return, California has provided for them an expanding population, and communities able to sustain wine consumption alongside their food intake – a pairing close to any Italian’s heart. More widely, the US offers a marketplace with a seemingly insatiable appetite for the new and the sweet. Such a landscape was bound to attract entrepreneurs with a feel for flavour.

Family Values

Name any highly commercial, influential and successful wine brand-building family in California, and chances are they will have Italian roots. Consider Riboli and its remarkable San Antonio winery, the last in production in downtown Los Angeles. Then there are Coppola, Gallo, Mondavi, Sebastiani and Trinchero, to name just a few.

These families, with their belief in traditional, generational farming and ownership, have embedded themselves in the very fabric of the American wine scene. They did not just navigate the devastation by Pierce’s disease [bacteria Xylella fastidiosa] in the 1890s, Prohibition in the 1920s and the bureaucratic nightmare that followed its repeal, but led the charge in establishing California’s general reputation in the field and in the market for both qualitative and innovative wines.

This leadership has not been limited to an Italian-only mindset, nor just to Italian grape varieties or wine styles. Their eyes have been firmly set on a wider community. Italian-owned wine businesses have been instrumental in developing America’s less tradition-bound, more playful, flavourful and experimental wine offerings. They have offered the American consumer a new way of enjoying the art of wine, just as the Italian masters Titian and Tintoretto brought vermilion red and dazzling ultramarine blue pigments to a Renaissance Venice.

Bringing Expertise

Some, such as Riboli and Gallo, have kept a close eye on flavour, driving a populist rather than place-driven wine business, concentrating a little less on terroir and more on taste. They have harnessed the benefits of a climate that can produce typically softer, riper, fruitier, sweeter grapes and added outstanding technical expertise to ensure consistency. Brands such as Stella Rosa and Apothic have introduced an array of new, bold flavours through their sweet, sparkling, fruit-flavoured, fun, moreish and immensely successful wines.

At the premium end of the market, many have chosen to make their reputation with varieties suited to place in the valleys, and in so doing they have achieved promotion, to the wider world, of whole regions as a heartland of highest quality. Wineries with a history of Italian ownership – such as Gallo-owned Louis M Martini, Mondavi and Francis Ford Coppola’s Inglenook in the Napa Valley, and Seghesio and Pedroncelli in Sonoma – have brought their winemaking expertise to bear on varieties such as Zinfandel (identical to the Italian Primitivo but with origins going back still further to Croatia and the Tribidrag variety) and Bordeaux varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon.

Feast for the Senses

Other winemakers – some with Italian ancestry, others not – continue to pursue a more authentic Italian experience with a California slant. At Villa Ragazzi, Michaela Rodeno and her late husband Gregory were the first to plant Sangiovese in the Napa Valley in 1985.

A false start with Nebbiolo led to success with Sangiovese, garnering early admiration in 1993 from the Marchese Piero Antinori himself, who considered their Sangiovese to be one of the very best expressions of the grape from around the world at the time. Today, their wines continue to offer appetising refreshment, with ripe red fruits cushioned by open-weave tannins, and a wonderful peppery sapidity tempered by the softening effect of Napa warmth.

The Pedroncellis, now approaching their centenary as vineyard owners and winemakers in Sonoma County, make a slightly bolder-styled Sangiovese than Villa Ragazzi. With a lick of spice and fresh herbs, it’s a bottle absolutely made for the dinner table. Travelling south to Santa Barbara, Stolpman’s Ballard Canyon Sangiovese develops even greater aromatic potential, redolent of roses in full bloom and ripe red stone fruit. Its La Croce blend of Sangiovese and Syrah billows with an almost incense-like intensity.

These rather wonderful aromas are a signature of others in Santa Barbara, a county that has offered winemakers steeped in the culture of food – including Alison Thomson and Paolo Barbieri MS with his wife Erin Kempe – inspiration for their craft.

Thomson established Lepiane Wines in 2013, named in honour of her great grandfather Luigi A Lepiane, who left Calabria for California and a new life for his family. Her Nebbiolo is an example of compelling perfumed perfection. Thomson embraces Italian grapes’ natural acidity, placing importance on being able to share wines together with food. She finds delight in introducing wine lovers to new styles and flavour profiles, such as her Malvasia with its distinctive phenolics and aromatically expressive honeysuckle, almond blossom and citrus zest.

Similarly, Barbieri and Kempe’s wines, under the Barbieri label, immediately captivate the imagination through the nose before a sip even passes the lips. Barbieri departed Rome, his birthplace, when he was 22, eventually settling in the US and putting his sommelier exposure to the world’s classic wines to good use in his own wine range. Kempe also came to wine through the culinary world, and together they now make wines from both Italian and French varieties that are feasts for the senses.

Perfect Assimilation

Sourcing Italian varieties remains a challenge, however, despite California now growing more than 120 different grape varieties. There is recognition that such diversity is not only a boon to marketing and the increasingly sophisticated on-trade lists serving California’s wealthy tourist industry, but a sop to climate change.

The lighter, brighter, lower-alcohol wines and chillable reds that can be made from Italian varieties such as Vermentino, Frappato and Nerello – the darlings of sommeliers – also have the advantage of retaining their acidity even in heat spikes.

What makes Italian Californian wines, in their many different guises, so deliciously appealing, however, is their perfect assimilation. Without losing sight of their inherited signatures and structural architecture – namely their aromatic complexity, verve and sappiness – most are identifiably Californian.

Just as generations of Italian émigrés to California have recalibrated their identities in order to emphasise their new home, so the wine industry they have assiduously helped to build and promote, from the roots upwards, is proudly American.

See tasting notes and scores for 17 top Italian-style Californian wines

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