How sustainable is Californian wine?

Written By Campbell Mattinson

Campbell Mattinson travels to California to see what the Californian wine industry is doing to up its sustainability game.

Earlier this year I spent five days travelling from Los Angeles to San Fransisco – following California’s Central Coast regions – to look at ongoing efforts to make the Californian wine industry more sustainable. This was a trip about the long game rather than, so much, about the here and now. The route we took included: Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria Valley, Los Alamos, Paso Robles, Santa Lucia Highlands, Monterey, San Benito County and then out of San Francisco. I’d never visited the US before. I didn’t know what to expect. From the first day of the trip I found myself quite dramatically inspired; by the end of it I was moved, such was the profound impression made by the lands we moved through, and the people we encountered. This 10-minute video gives some idea of the what, the how, and of the impact of this trip.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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Pisoni Vineyards, Santa Lucia Highlands, California