At around 40 miles in length, one end in the cool of San Francisco bay, the other in the warmth of the inland, the disneyfied Napa Valley is, it is easy to forget, a superb wine region. And with many superb growers. Having survived Prohibition, it grew from the sixties from a region without about 20 producers into a 200 plus producer area. Sub areas include Stags Leap and Carneros. Overall the valley does best with the Bordeaux grape varieties, especially in areas like Stags Leap, but places like Carneros are good sources of Chardonnay and Pinot for sparkling wines. The valley is full of Parker anointed and consumer acclaimed icons, including, Harlan, Screaming Eagle and Shafer. (CW 23/01/12)

Sonoma runs more or less parallel with Napa but much closer to the coast, which for much of the valley and areas like Green and Russian River in particular means cool climate and a long growing season. For instance our growers at Freeman routinely harvest in October, fully a month after their peers in Burgundy. It is the cold coastal Pacific currents that cause that. Additionally if you are visiting northern California, Sonoma is a little more real and less touristy. (CW 23/01/12)

Mendocino has fifteen thousand acres of vineyards in a mostly southern area that nevertheless encompasses a bonkers range of climatic conditions. Within Mendocino are the McDowell and Anderson Valley AVAs – American Viticultural Areas. (CW 23/01/12)

The coastal strip from San Francisco to Los Angeles in its entirety make up this huge AVA which has quality areas like Monterey and Santa Barbara within it. Mostly bulk wine made here with pockets of quality. (CW 23/01/12)

Famous for producing more agricultural output that China during the second half of the twentieth century and with individual companies producing more wine than Australia. Heavily irrigated and very fertile, the land has scarcely been farmed sustainably, rather it is the result of ultra scientific methods. Needless to say, it is responsible for most of California`s bulk wine. (CW 23/01/12)

Oregon was an early entrant into the alternative to Burgundy Pinot Noir rival camp, but then after the so-called breakthrough vintage of 1976 spent years in the doldrums, underachieving. Now it is realising its potential with Pinot Noir and other clones. (CW 23/01/12)

An exciting country with a strong fusion between Latin American and European cultures it has several growing regions of which the best known is probably Mendoza in the Andean foothills. The mountain region is most famous for red wines, especially from Argentina`s signature grape, Malbec, originally from Cahors in SW France. Its most characteristic white is grown further north in Salta and is called Torrontes – a Gewurztraminer like fruit. Newly developing areas for wine include the very southerly, cold and windswept Patagonia, which many hail as a great area to grow Pinot Noir. (CW 23/01/12)

A lot has changed since I went to Chile in the 1990s. With a near 500 year history of wine production this singular country looks like it is finally beginning to realise its potential as a quality wine producing nation. As long and thin as it is and with a variety of altitudes and terroirs, the Chilean wine industry has until recently concentrated on bulk production and they have been very successful. Now, finally, it seems that many more producers are cultivating organically and biodynamically and with slightly lower yields and a finer expression of terroir in these cases. Additionally the country’s growers have been gradually exploiting the more extreme areas, going both further south and higher up as well as nearer the coast in the rugged north. Virtually all the water for vines in Chile comes from winter snows in the form of controlled and rationed allocation. Until recently it was thought that Chile was the only phylloxera-free country in the world, but clearly someone has been smuggling ‘suitcase’ clones and avoiding quarantine, because the louse now seems established, if not that widespread as yet. (CW 10/09/18)