What do you prefer French or Californian wines ?

[GBaxter]

What do you much prefer to drink and/or consider is superior,

French wines or Californian wines and please say why.

[tsquare]

Both. Neither. Varies too much to arbitrarily select one over the other. And you are leaving out the rest of the world - and some superior options.

[pckizer]

Definitely French in general, though I do like a good number of CA wines.

It's most easily stated as a dislike rather than a like, though: I really dislike how fruit forward so many CA wines are, they're just fruit and more fruit, usually cherry on those I don't like.

On the like side, though, I do love big, hearty, leathery, barn-yard-y, vegetal and even a bit tannic wines and the French just seem to have a much better balance leaning toward that side for me.

[On the other hand, Spanish, Italian, Chilean, and Argentinean often hit on many of those notes with a good balance and come in cheaper than the French, but you didn't ask about those regions (yet).]

As I mentioned, some of the wineries on the CA side do make some extremely fine products as well, such as Phoenix Vineyards (their Blood of Jupiter Sangiovese is quite delightful and stacks up with many of the Italian Sans I've had but comes in cheaper than its imported cousins, its fruit is very present but doesn't overbalance the other notes).

[prasantrin]

I haven't had enough of either to choose fairly, but I've never had a Bourgogne I didn't like. Ever. Just based on that I'd have to go French.

[Dave Hatfield]

California when I'm in California; French when I'm in France; Australian when I'm in Australia, and so forth.

I just don't think you can beat drinking local wines wherever you are. This is especially true if you can get some good local advice. I've been lead to wines I'd never heard of and probably wouldn't have chosen without local advice that have been just wonderful.

An example. We were on vacation in the Capetown area a couple of years ago & had a local wine shop pointed out to us. The owner was wonderful. He recommended some outstanding wines to us including the local Pinotage and Zifs that I thought only grew in California. None were expensive by the way.

Another example. This spring we went to Spain for a brief vacation. Our friends took us to an upmarket restaurant to celebrate my birthday. The food was great, but I really loved the wine list. Mainly all Spanish wines as one would expect, but each wine had the blend of grapes it was made from (and their percentages) listed. I was able without knowing much about the intracity of Spanish wines to choose intelligently.

[MaxH]

What do you much prefer to drink and/or consider is superior,

French wines or Californian wines and please say why.

←

GBaxter, welcome to the forum -- it looks like this is your first post after some years of eG membership. Could you say more about what's behind the question, what you are looking for?

I've been hearing that question for some 30 years. I remember a European in 1979 asking earnestly "which are better, French or California wines?" To be frank, I find the question kind of annoying because it compares tens of thousands (at least) of California wines against circa 100 thousand French wines, each at all different quality levels and with some wines unique to each industry -- several French specialties lack California counterparts, and vice versa. It then asks for a subjective opinion for which few people have much data to base it on.

For example if you were a Californian seriously interested in Pinot Noir wines, for most of the last century you tended to get them from France because the grape had very limited US success, it was planted in growing regions too hot for it, and produced amazingly dull wines. There were literally about 100 times more vineyards producing it in Burgundy, and many inexpensive French labels were available in California for a few dollars -- I bought them (it's still true, by the way, though not always perceived). In the 1980s, well-made US pinots appeared in numbers (not just from California!) and the picture changed gradually. Today there are wine enthusiasts who've experienced Pinots mainly through US labels, which would have been almost unbelievable 20 years ago because there just weren't many US labels for sale. That example, and there are many others, hints at the problem with such a question. (Thus after some experience I drink, and consider superior, wines from both regions, all depending on specifics.)