Wine: What a Difference a Decade Makes

Inflation was perking along at better than 11%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened 1980 at under 840, and wine lovers were buying First Growth Bordeaux for less than $20 a bottle. The best California Chardonnays were $8; the best Cabernets were $7.50.

Today, the Dow is above 2,600 and you can’t get a glass of a First Growth Bordeaux for less than ten bucks.

In the late 1970s, Chenin Blanc and Riesling still sold rather well. You’d also see a lot of the so-called Soft Johannisberg Riesling and Soft Chenin Blanc, which were sweeter, low-alcohol wines developed by the late Ed Friedreich at San Martin Winery. Blue Nun was in its heyday.

Fad wines heading into 1980 were Pouilly-Fuisse a mediocre Macon white that usually didn’t represent good value but sold because Americans liked to show they could pronounce French, Lambrusco and the remnants of the soda-like sangria. Red wine was still just for snobs. Rose, Chenin Blanc and Riesling were barely hanging on. By the end of the decade, White Zinfandel rocked to the front as a bona fide trend, moving from less than 30,000 cases in 1980 to about 11 million cases in 1989.

Chianti was essentially still packaged in bulbus-bottomed, straw-wrapped fiaschi and upscale Italian wine was just beginning to be seen in the United States in the form of Barolo and Barbaresco at prices--$6 to $10--that some consumers felt were outrageous.

German wines were still selling because of the availability of wines from the great vintages of the prior decade--1971, 1975 and 1976.

Among the top “hot,” upscale restaurant brands a decade ago were The Monterey Vineyard, Clos du Val, Chappellet, Mayacamas, Domaine Chandon, Chateau St. Jean, Mondavi, Jordan, Caymus, and Freemark Abbey. Fetzer wasn’t a major force; Glen Ellen wasn’t born, nor was Sonoma Cutrer, Ferrari Carano, and Randy Dunn had made just one wine.

Through the late 1970s, wine-by-the-glass was typically poured from a multi-gallon jug by a bartender far from the sight of the patron. That all changed in the ‘80s largely because of a machine called the Cruvinet.

With the Cruvinet, in which the bottle being dispensed is open to view, the patron could see the label of the bottle being ordered, and the brand name of the wine became a status symbol that restaurateurs felt justified a higher price per glass--$6 to $7 in some cases.

A real change in wine drinking habits came about early in the decade as Americans discovered California Chardonnay and Fume Blanc (the term Sauvignon Blanc was not as popular back then) to be fashionable dry wines that matched with food. It was an exciting time of transition. Wine collectors who previously bought just a handful of wines began to see labels from literally dozens of prestigious new properties.

This new approach to wine also prompted restaurants to look at their glassware, which began a kind of mini-trend toward better wine stemware. That trend took a major stride forward recently when Patina, Joachim Splichal’s new restaurant on Melrose, began using Reidl stemware, one of the most perfect and attractive lines of wine glasses.

The physical appearance of the restaurant wine list began to change about 1980 as the computer entered the business. In the past, these lists were often expensive to produce, frequently the work of a caligrapher using a gold-tipped pen. Because they changed so infrequently, restaurateurs were loath to add new wines to their list, or run out of old favorites. And because they didn’t change from year to year, often they contained no vintage dates. But as restaurants discovered the computer, loose-leaf wine books came of age.