Wine Industry

IMAGINE a world in which the best sparkling wines come from Surrey in southern England, not Champagne. A world where Monterey Bay is home to California's best Cabernet Sauvignons and Sweden produces world-class Rieslings. It's not science fiction. A growing number of climatologists are warning that by the turn of the next century, such a radically altered wine map could be the new reality.

A large harvest this fall has left wineries loaded with the top-selling red varieties just when they are trying to move large surpluses left over from 2005's record grape crush -- to the benefit of wine aficionados. Winemakers squeezed almost 1.9 million tons of red wine grapes last year, according to a joint state and federal agricultural report released Friday. Although that's 16% less than the previous year, it is still the second-largest on record.

A Colorado wine merchant was sentenced Monday to two years' house arrest and five years' probation after pleading guilty to federal fraud charges for bilking clients out of millions of dollars for wine futures that he never delivered. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of seven to nine years in federal prison. But attorneys for Ronald Wallace, 49, who has Crohn's disease, argued that he was too sick to be treated in prison. U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall agreed. She ordered him to pay $11.

UNLESS you've been living under an air-conditioned rock for the last couple of decades, you may have noticed signs that the world seems to be getting warmer. It's been widely reported that the trend is likely to wreak some interesting havoc upon California's wine regions in the not-too-distant future, leaving Napa and parts of Sonoma with conditions that resemble the Central Valley.

A castle is rising south of this small resort town that promises to be Napa Valley's most lavish tourist draw. Or a vintner's fortune-busting folly. In April, Daryl Sattui, whose winery and deli a few miles away in St. Helena are a popular picnic stop, plans to open to the public a sprawling, medieval-style castle and second winery that he has been building for 12 years.

A colorful wine industry entrepreneur has been accused of setting a $200-million fire at a Vallejo wine storage warehouse to cover up a scheme to steal and then sell his clients' wine, federal authorities announced Monday. The October 2005 blaze at Wines Central, which rocked Northern California's wine industry, destroyed millions of bottles of premium wine, obliterating entire wine libraries as well as some highly rated blends that had not yet been tasted by the public.

EVER wonder what goes into a bottle of wine? The story winemakers love to tell on the bottle label is one of a mystical alchemy of climate, soils, ancient practices and long traditions. Wine labels tend to focus on romance; the small amount of government-mandated information includes the percentage of alcohol, a warning against consuming wine when pregnant or driving, and a disclosure of sulfites.

Even the silence is different here. Despite a woodpecker working furiously on the eaves of a not-too-distant water tower and the buzz of tractors trolling, the quiet--like the canopy of fog--settles around you, pulls you in and ultimately disorients you. I wake early to a dense, poetic mist on the vineyards and the local folk and bluegrass show "Humble Pie."

James Cameron couldn't have scripted it better, the way 76-year-old Wanda Woock, grande dame of the Lodi wine country, pointed a finger at her gold brooch and then at a photograph of the very same brooch a hundred years back, glinting like pure Hollywood magic on a young woman's lace collar. Peering out from a gilt frame on the wall of the rustic tasting room at Jessie's Grove Winery, the young woman looked familiar. So I asked: "Is that you, by any chance?"

On one corner of Paso Robles' main square--a charming place with a park and gazebo at its heart and a sweet mix of historic buildings, wine-tasting rooms and boutiques at its edges--is a clock tower shaped like an acorn. It is meant as a tribute to the oak trees that give the area its high visual drama.