When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?
"You can grow very good $15-a-bottle grapes all over."
A big reason winemakers form groups, at least in California, is access to know-how and most important, good grapes.
There is most certainly a shortage of good grapes on the West Coast.
But a good grape or fruit selection alone does not make a winery.
If you eat the other way, you will not have a good grape in the lot.
Say what you will, there's nothing to beat the flavour of good grape.
Presumably, they did not go Gentile onto those good grapes.
There has been - and continues to be - a serious shortage of good grapes, both red and white, in California.
They took a perfectly good grape and for a century made really bad wine with it.