Why California's Mediterranean varieties are about to have their moment in the sun

There’s a ‘holy trinity’ of California wine – Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon.

They dominate restaurant lists, anchor most tasting rooms, and take up more retail shelf space than everything else combined.

For the past 50 years, this has been the California wine story. But there is a lot more to that story, and it began here long before those three grapes.

‘If you really zoom out, it’s actually kind of absurd that we’ve built our entire reputation on Burgundian varieties and a Bordeaux variety,' says Morgan Twain-Peterson, winemaker at Bedrock Wine Co. in Sonoma.

'From a strictly climate standpoint, Mediterranean varieties are the grapes we should be growing in our Mediterranean climate.’

Curious consumers

It’s not a new idea. Before Prohibition, California vineyards were full of Carignan, Alicante Bouschet, Mourvèdre, Petite Sirah and Cinsault.

A lot has happened since Prohibition, including a recent and noticeable slowdown in sales – particularly of Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

‘People can’t sell them,’ says Twain-Peterson. ‘They’re either ripping vineyards out or thinking about what else they can grow.’

The timing aligns with a generation of consumers looking for something different.

People are drinking less, but when they do drink, they want authenticity, curiosity, value – wines that feel like discovery, not a status symbol.

‘People are more and more willing to try new grapes,’ says Jason Haas, proprietor of Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles, whose estate has been built entirely around all the traditional varieties of Châteauneuf-du-Pape for nearly four decades.

‘It’s never been easier than it is now.’

And the range of what consumers are discovering in California goes well beyond Grenache and Syrah.

‘The first wines to sell at Bedrock last year were the weird stuff,’ says Twain-Peterson. In a market built on name recognition, under-the-radar has become a selling point.

Many of those once-obscure grapes are finding their own expression and a new audience in California.

'Picpoul has great acidity, but the California expression is more tropical and a little more luscious than what people are used to from the south of France,' says Haas. 'It’s a grape that is capable of more than it’s usually allowed to show in France.'

Carignan tells a similar story. 'Old-vine Carignan is the most underrated thing in California,' says Twain-Peterson – 'affordable, endlessly expressive, capable of everything from crunchy and bright to rich and structured, depending on where it’s grown.'

The right place

The appeal goes beyond what’s in the glass. According to growers and producers, these varieties are better suited to the areas where they are grown.

‘If we’re talking about what’s still going to get ripe in a cool year, but also withstand a furnace blast of 110 degrees for six days straight like we got in 2022 – those varieties are far better candidates to deal with heat,’ says Twain-Peterson.

Not coincidentally, many of California’s oldest vines – the ones that have survived a century of heat, drought and frost – are mostly Mediterranean varieties.

‘Planting something that’s happier in a hot, sunny, dry climate should mean it’ll live longer,’ says Haas. ‘That’s got to be a good thing – both from a cost standpoint and from a pure sustainability standpoint.’

There is a direct line between what belongs in the ground and what ends up in the bottle in its purest state.

‘When you have the right variety in the right place, the wine becomes transparent to the terroir,’ says John Hamel, winemaker at Hamel Family Wines in the Moon Mountain District of Sonoma Valley, who has been grafting Grenache over from Cabernet and planting Mourvèdre on his estate.

‘The wines have been a real revelation,’ he adds.

A freedom of expression

Freed from the stylistic expectations of established varietals in California, producers find themselves more creative with winemaking choices, and consumers benefit from having no canon to defer to, no benchmark to be wrong about.

‘When there isn’t this backlog of every style of that wine,’ says Hamel, ‘people are interested in that.’

That diversity of expression is precisely what makes these wines feel less intimidating to a new generation of drinkers.

At the heart of it, what drives all of this is a genuine belief that California has more to offer than most people think.

‘I hope they will find grapes that show the place in which they’re grown in a beautiful way, where none of us is trying to copy the Old World,’ says Haas.

‘We’re trying to find grapes that are well suited for their spots in California – that will show the soils, show the weather, show complexity and freshness and balance, without having to be manipulated to do so.’

A selection of California's Mediterranean wines from Ana Carolina Quintela:

Related articles