United States

California can do this. Most of it doesn't.

I am not a California skeptic. I am a skeptic about what California usually chooses to do with its remarkable growing conditions, which is to make wine that is impressive rather than interesting, and expensive rather than worth it. The estates in this book are the exceptions I have found over many years of looking: growers and winemakers who have decided, at some cost to themselves, that restraint belongs in California as much as anywhere vines grow, and that their fruit deserves better than to be made into something that flatters and then vanishes. I believe they're right. The wines argue it better than I can.

Thirty-Six Estates