2026

The California Issue

This year’s California Issue is especially poignant as the Golden State celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris in the midst of growing existential challenges. We talked to wine industry veterans about the best path forward, hunted for truffles in Paso Robles, paired the best tacos in Los Angeles with California wines, and went down to Valle de Guadalupe to investigate the unsolved mystery of Mexican Nebbiolo.

LA’s Best Wine Bars Are Hidden in Plain Sight

Among the celebrity haunts, old-school classics, and Michelin-star chasers, an unpretentious wine scene is the real reason to love LA.

Letter from the Publisher

We’re Down With J.O.P (Yeah, You Know Me)

California’s audacity lives on 50 years later, and we need it now more than ever.

In 1976, California was a pip-squeak kid poking the bear of Bordeaux. The sheer audacity it took to sit down at that table and blind taste against the French on their home turf is what we should be drawing inspiration from today. Not the victory. The nerve.

So here we are, at the 50th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris, and I keep asking myself: What are we still trying to prove?

The real fight isn’t France versus California anymore. Our enemy is bigger and, frankly, scarier. It’s a growing lack of engagement, a culture drifting away from the table, and a generation that hasn’t yet discovered what we already know: Wine is often the connective tissue of social joy.

The 60 Minutes segment “The French Paradox” isn’t coming to the rescue. We never needed France to validate us anyway; we proved that in ’76, and we’ve been proving it every vintage since. California hasn’t just established itself on the world stage; it has set new standards and become an icon entirely on its own terms.

But the next 50 years won’t be won by defending what we’ve built. Today, making great wine is permission to play, not a guarantee you’ll win. California winemakers will succeed by doing what the state has always done best—taking risks, asking questions nobody else is asking, planting grapes nobody thought would work, and ripping out the ones that no longer serve us. The producers I’m most excited about right now are the ones willing to lose it all to find something new.

California’s land is an embarrassment of riches that no other wine region on Earth can replicate. Staggering coastline. Fruit-powering sunshine. A grower culture that is intrinsically down to earth. The Golden State has none of the formality of the Old World, just the authenticity that this moment demands—genuine dialogue, real stories, and a sense of place so vivid it practically speaks for itself.

That spirit lives in these pages. Every story in this issue is a story about people risking it, rethinking it, betting on California the way Chateau Montelena and Stag’s Leap bet on themselves in a Paris hotel in May of 1976. Fifty years later, California’s place in wine history is established. But the unsettled part is the most interesting part. Let’s take these stories as inspiration.

Photography: Paul Aresu,Hair and Makeup: Robert Moulton