California Wine Country

MICHAEL SCHWAB is one of the nation’s preeminent graphic artists. His striking images of national parks and Amtrak trains, among many other subjects, have become iconic.

Now Schwab and the Thomas Reynolds Gallery have teamed up to present a series of his images of California’s wine regions. The signed digital prints on archival paper are 15.5 x 38 inches, available for $600 each, plus $20 shipping. To order, email the gallery.

FOR MOST OF the world, “Napa Valley” is shorthand for all California wines, in the same way that Hollywood means American movies. It’s home to some of California’s grandest wineries.

OF ALL CALIFORNIA’S wine regions, Sonoma may be the easiest to fall in love with. In part, Sonoma has the advantage of sheer size. At more than 1,500 square miles, it’s as big as Rhode Island, and those square miles manage to encompass all the best things about the entire state.

SAY LAKE COUNTY to most Northern Californians and they will think waterskiing on Clear Lake and very hot summers. Will they think wine? Probably not. This is a mistake.

IT SEEMS ALMOST unfair that Monterey County should produce high-quality wines. It already has, in Point Lobos and Big Sur, the most stunningly gorgeous coast in the world. It has Carmel’s carefully rustic charm. It has marine science in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, plus Steinbeck’s novels and Robinson Jeffers’ poems. Why does it even need grapes? But grapes it has, and today Monterey County is a wine powerhouse.

EVERY ROAD INTO Santa Barbara’s wine country is beautiful, but maybe the most beautiful of all is Highway 154, which climbs north over the San Marcos Pass from the city of Santa Barbara. The highway crests, and there below you spreads the valley green, walled on three sides by mountais, and stretching mistily west to the Pacific.

THERE’S BEEN WINEMAKING in Mexico since before California vintners could say “new French oak.” But it wasn’t until about 30 years ago that a special little valley in northern Baja California — just 90 miles south of San Diego — began growing grapes capable of producing great wine. Now the Guadalupe Valley, which angles northeast from Ensenada, is becoming a bona fide wine country.

— Text from California Wine Country, published by Sunset Books, with images by Michael Schwab.