Elaine Chukan Brown, The Wines of California (Académie du Vin Library, 2025).

California wine has a long history of facing what feel like insurmountable challenges. It also has a long history of people coming together to problem solve, innovate, and succeed once again. Honest examination of pressures on the industry can reveal ways the people of California might plan its future. (p. 303)

Elaine Chukan Brown’s terrific new book has just been released. It is not just a good book but an important one. It presents us with an opportunity both to think in new ways about the wines of California and to reconsider what we think about wine books in general.

The Wines of California does not present a static picture of California and its wine. It is all about change, and the overarching theme is resilience in the face of persistent challenges.

Some have written that what makes this book different is its attention to history and it is easy to see where that comes from. The first chapter, for example, focuses on California’s indigenous peoples for the very good reason that they are central to the state’s wine origin story. Grape vines were planted and grape wine was made for use in the Spanish missions. The indigenous peoples were both the intended consumers of the wine (sacramental wine) and the labor that was employed to produce it.

The book’s first section traces the history of California wine through Prohibition and its aftermath, the rise of industrial agriculture, and on to the present day. It is California wine in context like never before. The middle section analyzes California’s regions and its 154 AVAs along with a curated sample of wine producers. Gosh, I wish I knew as much as any of the AVAs as Elaine Chuckan Brown seems to know about all of them!

“What we’re facing” is the title of the final section of the book and it is noteworthy in its focus on the current wine industry crisis, which affects California and the world, too. Here all the interdisciplinary threads that you’ve been following are brought together in a discussion of how a resilient industry responds to what is its biggest challenge in a long time. If you want to understand the current wine crisis clearly but beyond bullet-point depth, this is what you want to read.

In this regard The Wines of California reminds me of another recent book, One Thousand Vines: A New Way to Understand Wine by Pascaline LePeltier. Both books challenge the reader to see connections beyond the obvious ones and to understand the complex dynamics that shape the wine industry and the liquid in our glasses.

Considering these two books together made me think of something that Ian Fleming supposedly said. Once is happenstance, according to Fleming, twice is a coincidence. Three times is enemy action! Is something going on in the world of the idea of wine? Are we in the second stage of a revolution in terms of how we understand wine?

Congratulations to Elaine Chukan Brown on a masterful contribution to the new wine literature. Wine book readers, be alert. Enemy action seems to be quietly mobilizing.