On the trolley to the Angel Island Immigration Station, Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025
By Esther Mobley, Senior Wine Critic Oct 23, 2025 - San Francisco Chronicle
Jancis Robinson, arguably the most revered living wine writer, has been on the beat for 50 years. On her eponymous website and in her columns for the U.K.’s Financial Times, she covers the full enological world, from the grand crus of Burgundy to the wilds of Australia to, lately, the formidable vineyards of her native England.
Given that breadth of perspective, I was interested during a recent interview with Robinson to understand how she sees the arc of California wine over the last half-century. She’s proven herself committed to covering the Golden State’s wine scene, and this month she’s in the Bay Area: Next week, she’ll be in Napa to speak at the Old Vine Conference, a multi-day event dedicated to wines from historic vineyards. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of JancisRobinson.com, Robinson will be hosting an extravagant, $1,500-a-head dinner at the Morris in San Francisco, each course paired with a trio of wines from France, England and California.
What struck me most was how pivotal Robinson was to establishing a thirst for California wines in the U.K. in the ’70s and ’80s, convincing the Port- and Bordeaux-loving Brits that American bottles were worthy of connoisseurship too.
When Robinson began her wine writing career in 1975, California “was not thought of as being a source of exciting wine,” she said. The following year, she heard a rumor that one of Champagne’s most famous houses, Moet & Chandon, might be up to something in Napa Valley. She traveled from London to Yountville and filed a story — her first in a national publication — for the Sunday Times about the fledgling Domaine Chandon. “It was a scoop,” Michaela Rodeno, Domaine Chandon’s vice president at the time, wrote in an email. (Robinson made a statement, Rodeno said, when she showed up to the winery “in long blonde curls, a flowy black robe, and … red glasses.”)
Moet & Chandon’s investment in Napa piqued the interest of British wine lovers, Robinson said, but it wasn’t until the early 1980s that California wines became “a bit more normalized” there. A weak dollar helped propel an influx of California exports, which suddenly seemed to the Brits like a very good value. And the results of 1976’s Judgment of Paris, the famous competition in which French judges deemed California wines superior to French counterparts, were finally beginning to percolate.
How California wine has changed, according to the greatest living wine writer
Greg
Quick and Dirty
Jancis Robinson, arguably the most revered living wine writer, has been on the beat for 50 years. On her eponymous website and in her columns for the U.K.’s Financial Times, she covers the full enological world, from the grand crus of Burgundy to the wilds of Australia to, lately, the formidable vineyards of her native England.
Given that breadth of perspective, I was interested during a recent interview with Robinson to understand how she sees the arc of California wine over the last half-century. She’s proven herself committed to covering the Golden State’s wine scene, and this month she’s in the Bay Area: Next week, she’ll be in Napa to speak at the Old Vine Conference, a multi-day event dedicated to wines from historic vineyards. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of JancisRobinson.com, Robinson will be hosting an extravagant, $1,500-a-head dinner at the Morris in San Francisco, each course paired with a trio of wines from France, England and California.
What struck me most was how pivotal Robinson was to establishing a thirst for California wines in the U.K. in the ’70s and ’80s, convincing the Port- and Bordeaux-loving Brits that American bottles were worthy of connoisseurship too.
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When Robinson began her wine writing career in 1975, California “was not thought of as being a source of exciting wine,” she said. The following year, she heard a rumor that one of Champagne’s most famous houses, Moet & Chandon, might be up to something in Napa Valley. She traveled from London to Yountville and filed a story — her first in a national publication — for the Sunday Times about the fledgling Domaine Chandon. “It was a scoop,” Michaela Rodeno, Domaine Chandon’s vice president at the time, wrote in an email. (Robinson made a statement, Rodeno said, when she showed up to the winery “in long blonde curls, a flowy black robe, and … red glasses.”)
Moet & Chandon’s investment in Napa piqued the interest of British wine lovers, Robinson said, but it wasn’t until the early 1980s that California wines became “a bit more normalized” there. A weak dollar helped propel an influx of California exports, which suddenly seemed to the Brits like a very good value. And the results of 1976’s Judgment of Paris, the famous competition in which French judges deemed California wines superior to French counterparts, were finally beginning to percolate.
In the ’80s, Robinson became the honorary secretary of the Zinfandel Club, an influential British organization that proselytized for California’s signature red to fellow wine lovers. Early California hits in the London market — Zinfandel and otherwise — included, in Robinson’s recollection, Ridge, Chalone, Trefethen, Spring Mountain Vineyard, Sterling, Schramsberg and Mondavi.
Robinson and her husband, Nick Lander, made quite a statement in 1981 when the opening wine list of their new London restaurant, L’Escargot, consisted entirely of American bottles. (Mostly California, but the odd Washington Merlot and Oregon Pinot Noir made an appearance.) On opening night, Robert Mondavi showed up unexpectedly, joining the table that Lander was hosting for the builders who had worked on the restaurant’s construction. The scandal of the American wine list, coupled with Mondavi’s cameo, was enough to make it into the gossip pages of the paper the next day.
L'Escargot’s unconventional wine list was not universally embraced. “There was one party of six French people who came in, ordered their food, looked at the wine list, got up and walked out,” Robinson said. She subsequently added a few concessions — Sancerre, Muscadet, Chablis and Champagne.
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Those French snobs were outliers. For the most part, in the ’80s, “California wine really was the thing” in London, Robinson said. In the ’90s, many California producers began making wines in a fruitier, higher-alcohol style, which didn’t suit the austere English palate, including Robinson’s. California “went through a stage where it was making a lot of wine that was not to my taste — overripe, too similar,” she said.
These days, however, Robinson is heartened by what she tastes from California. “I love the fact that it’s much more experimental now and there are far more wines that are fresher, and genuinely trying to express place,” which the high alcohol levels tended to obscure, Robinson said.
It's a shame, Robinson said, that this period of California winemakers’ creative experimentation is coinciding with a global decline in alcohol consumption. In 50 years on the job, “I’ve never seen a downturn like this,” she said. Her career essentially “coincided with the world falling in love with wine,” and now she’s seeing that interest wane for the first time in her professional life.
What will come out of this complicated moment? As many people cut back on drinking for health reasons, Robinson predicts that the low end of the wine market, which may cater to people just seeking a buzz, will continue to drop. (Already, wines under $10 have been seeing the sharpest sales declines of any category.) “The days of cheap wine are over,” she said. “That’s not a U.S.-specific comment. I’m thinking of elderly Frenchmen who used to unthinkingly drink a liter of ordinary red a day.”
Those who will continue to drink wine will do so thoughtfully, she believes, and they may be willing to spend more on it. She celebrates that idea, though she also laments the notion that wine could become a luxury beverage for special occasions, no longer a simple, quotidian pleasure at the dinner table.
Robinson refuses to believe that wine will become doomed to irrelevance, though. “From where I sit there doesn’t seem to be any falloff in the number of people who want to make wine, take a wine course, go on a wine-focused holiday,” she said. “People still seem to want to learn.”