Following on yesterday’s post about the general snubbing of white wines by many wine aficionados (see Are White Wines Still for Amateurs?), I thought I would write about red versus white wine grape plantings. As an attorney involved with wine as well as environmental law, I find it interesting to keep up with what is going on in the vineyard.

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Map shows red versus white wine grape acreage for California counties with over 10,000 acres of wine grape plantings.

The Largest Counties

There are five counties that each have over 40,000 planted wine grape acres. As you can see in the table, three of the counties, San Joaquin, Sonoma, and Napa, favor red wine grapes by at least 2:1. In the case of Napa, it is 3:1. Monterey and Fresno, on the other hand, are more democratic with about a 50:50 split between red and white.

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All Counties

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Overall, plantings favor red wine grapes, again by about that 2:1 margin. I suppose this should not be a surprise. Vineyards, of course, plant grapes that reflect what they can sell. As my informal survey at the wine tasting showed, wine drinkers prefer red. I may even go so far as to say by a 2:1 margin based on the number of red versus white wine bottles sampled.