Recently, I received the latest issue of "Connoisseur's Guide to California Wines" (CGCW), one of the older publications that reviews (mostly) California wines. In their Aug. 2005 issue, they reviewed 163 recently released California Cabernets, almost all of which came from the highly touted 2001-2 vintages. Of these 163, 1 (the 2002 Diamond Creek Gravelly Meadow) received their highest accolade of ***, whereas
16 received a rating of ** and 56 received a grade of *. If we take these three rankings as meaning bottles meriting serious attention, then 73/163 (44%) made the grade with less than 1% achieving the highest status and ~10% reaching **. Granted, many of the heavy hitters (Ridge, Phelps, Montelena e.g.) were missing from this issue, but as a survey of what's on the market I believe that it gives us an accurate picture.Much has been written in recent years about the tremendous strides made in winemaking in CA, so I decided to see it this was reflected in increasingly positive reviews in CGCW by digging out an older issue of CGCW (Vol. 6 from 1981) that looked at Cabs from the '76-'77 vintages (drought years that produced some very good wines, but which weren't heralded as great years). What I found was that, of 212 wines reviewed,
1 (