here are plenty of heroes in this story. One is Randy Dunn, who is quite open in his praise of RO (Reverse Osmosis) and his condemnation of overripe fruit. Another is Michael Havens, who agreed in 2001, in the interest of openness and consumer education, to have his face plastered all over the The New York Times as an “outed” micro-ox practitioner. There are some journalist heroes out there, too. Some have supported the politically incorrect view that good wine is good wine, and those who can enhance distinctive terroir expression are welcome to their tools: Jamie Goode, Patrick Matthews, Derrick Schneider. Others lean to the conservative, but are tireless, rigorous and open: Eric Asimov, Alice Feiring.

There are villains, too. Some writers are widening the information disconnect between winemakers and wine buffs with all the good-hearted integrity of a Beverly Hills divorce attorney. Many paparazzi who have come to interview me, agenda in hand, tasted through my wines, and responded like any modern journalist when confronted with an inconvenient truth. They ignored it. Despite many compliments delivered in person, their lambastes of wine technology contain scarcely a word about my wines.

I make Eurocentric, balanced, distinctive, somewhat offbeat wines, which share the purpose of presenting alternative styles for California and thus don’t resemble the mainstream. They are not impact wines. They are harmonious, skillfully crafted wines of balance and harmony, each a unique expression of terroir. They age well.

Writers love to coax winemakers to be open. Then sometimes they nail them. When I started posting the particulars of techniques used for specific wines, it proved helpful in convincing Vinovation’s winery clients to explore style options outside the lockstep mainstream, but among the media, it has mostly made me a target. No points for honesty from this bunch. Since I consider inauthenticity the heart of the problem, it’s ironic to watch critics go for the throat when a winemaker tells the truth.

Likewise there are retailers who have joined the bandwagon, dropping wines they really like when they discover they are made by someone willing to be honest about their production methods. More dupes than villains.

I don’t know if that certain writer for the Wine Spectator who started it all in 2001 (and continues to rail against technology) has ever tasted my wines, though I sent him a flight. He won’t return my calls.

It is time for all players to start being straight. It feels to me like many journalists are afraid to put their weapons on safety and venture out from their entrenched positions. Ye passionate scribes: I implore you to make a rigorous accounting of your politics, and consider if the wine world might be better off if winemakers could speak freely of their work without attracting fragging from those who claim to revere their craft. It’s the downside of bounty. Unlike in my salad days, a flat-out crappy bottle of wine today is quite rare. The problems which commonly haunted wine lists twenty years ago – oxidized, sour, vinegary, or just incredibly funky – are scarce today. But the science and practical expertise which eradicated these problems have sown their own generation of complaints.

It’s a timeless irony. The problems we complain of today are actually children of the solutions we found to yesterday’s problems. Our malaise du jour? Much of this good clean wine is pretty doggone boring.

The Good, The Bad and the Funky

No doubt about it. Ninety percent of the wine we drink is supplied by ten percent of wineries, mostly big corporate outfits - commodity McWine in a dozen conventional styles - who deliver their product with scientific precision and industrial efficiency. For the most part, marketing departments at large wineries and the winemakers who work for them are astoundingly responsive to market demands. Most wine is a commodity that sells based on very specific parameters that have been honed over the last couple of decades. The simple fact is that unusual wines, wines of distinction, don’t sell very easily, so the mega-boutiques don’t waste time and money making them. For them, producing “interesting” wine equals fiscal suicide.

The remaining tenth is divided among thousands of small niche producers whose main problem is an honest point of distinction. It may be an extrinsic strategy: a cute dog on the label, a memorable tasting room experience, a promising appellation pedigree, or some other oddity unrelated to what’s in the bottle. But often as not, it’s intrinsic, i.e. in the bottle, a distinctive style which builds a following over time.

Anyone who hasn’t tried to do so can’t possibly imagine how much work it is to establish a new brand today. In truth, there is almost no receptivity for a new player outside the norm. You would think that all that web-kvetching about terroir would show up in the marketplace in a way that a guy could use to build a brand.

In your dreams, maybe. It’s really weird to spend all day trying to shoehorn a damned good Euro-centric Cabernet Franc or Chablis-styled Chardonnay onto crowded retail shelves and then to come home to an Internet forever moaning about sameness and “anywhere-ness.” Us small winery guys keep wondering: When are you te