Mattinson in California

This is an Australian wine critic’s view of California – the wines, the vineyards, and the people working them. It includes reviews, vineyard visits and sustainability reporting, from Santa Barbara and Paso Robles through the Santa Lucia Highlands to Monterey. These places are mostly written about from the inside;
these views are from the outside.

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THE FIRST TIME I ever stepped onto a Californian vineyard – near the end of April 2025 – one of Elon Musk’s rocket ships exploded up from the horizon, soundlessly, effectively right there in front of me. When I was a kid, in Australia, there was a phrase we always used, especially when watching the news. This phrase was: Only in America. This phrase remains as apt as ever, though it’s not used so much anymore. The world is nearer now; all those Only in America things seem a little less funny or entertaining now that they also feel on our doorstep. And yet as I watched that rocket spear into the sky, fireballs and all, and as – a good few minutes later – the sound of it rumbled through the earth beneath my feet and, as it did, gave the earth a palpable shake – it occurred to me that things still happened in America that happened almost nowhere else, and that it’s totemic pot of power and wonder was as deep and as alarming as ever, and that despite everything it was still impossible to look away. Nothing captivates quite like America. You can stand in a vineyard and, unannounced, free-of-charge, a rocket ship can explode into the sky in front of you. The day before, arriving at LAX airport, I’d ridden a bus from the terminal to the most budget of the Uber queues, and the driver of that bus had pulled out a microphone and announced to us tourists: No matter what anyone tells you in this country, no matter what bus you on or what hotel you in, you are a first class person and don’t let no other person tell you different. Later that day my taxi driver had told me the name of the best of the wine supermarket chains, if the tour I was on fell short. He’d also pointed out the building where Die Hard was filmed. I hadn’t yet tasted a wine. But the layers of this American life had rapidly began to peel back, and as each one did I could tell that there were many more than I’d imagined. I was on a five-day tour. We had a skipper and indeed a Mary Ann with us on the bus. These days would be wine-life changing.

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This page of the Mattinson website is dedicated to Californian wine regions, California wine travel and Californian wines. It comes from the perspective of an Australian travelling through and tasting California.