And with all this talk of merlot in my head I thought I would break out one of my California Wine Club offerings. Last month was Gainey; a producer that has been around since the eighties located in Santa Barbara County in an AVA within an AVA; the larger being the Santa Ynez Valley and the smaller being the Santa Rita Hills.

catching on to this dilemma in the next couple of years realizing that the industrialization of the little pinecone can only go so far. Then it caught on and became a kind of demented obsession for the mass market as producers in California began to industrialize one hundred percent merlot to the point of lunacy. It just worked.