They were available to whomever of the public cared to read about them or ask merchants, and they did not carry anything like the cachet they might evoke today from later US wine enthusiasts knowing the popularity that some of those labels developed.
By the way, in the tasting articles I mentioned, consistently, the tasters or tasting committees who wrote them summarized their recommendations, for easy consumer guidance, into a few broad categories, just as meats, or Internet jokes, can be graded Prime/Choice/Good/Utility/Pet. Everyone I've talked to with serious experience of wine, professional or amateur, seems to agree at least privately that when you get down to brass tacks, that is about as fine a recommendation grading as is meaningful, concerning the substance of the wine experience in the glass. Beyond that, the consumer really must taste and choose.
Now I have not checked into this much, but I had the impression in the late
90s in the US that a frenzy of fashion for premium California Cabs was rapidly boosting some prices. I saw labels unheard-of a few years earlier, being snapped up by people newly obsessed with the subject (and maybe unaware of the newness of the labels, as they also were unaware of the oldness of other labels newly hip). But that seems to have moderated after the economic shocks, and in the last year or two there's talk of high-priced goods not moving. A general California "lake of wine" at the wholesale level is finding, sometimes, discreet outlets, as lakes do.This all leaves me wondering (and not just me), where, or how, are good values found now in the more serious, well-made, artisanal California cabs, the the wines that might compare to those at the beginning above, though maybe a bit more expensive today (as premium wine prices have certainly outpaced inflation).
-- Max