Making Sense of California Wine

The third entry in Kramer's Making Sense series is both a thoroughly enjoyable read and an indispensable buying guide. He seems to know exactly how much technical information he can convey without causing the lay reader's eyes to glaze. He begins with an intriguing proposition, looking at California wines from the perspective of place of origin, to see if they possess what he calls a ``somewhere-ness.'' While the profitability and popularity of chardonnay has led to a surfeit of characterless California wines, he argues that wines from the state do indeed have distinctly geographic personalities: ``One can taste a Cabernet Sauvignon and contend that its source is Stags Leap District or Howell Mountain or Diamond Mountain.'' The bulk of the book consists of chapters devoted to each of the seven major California growing regions and their climatic and topographic peculiarities, concluding with Kramer's evaluation of how well producers in the area have made use of the hand Mother Nature has dealt them. Occasionally, Kramer falls into the wine writer's trap of turning a phrase a bit too tightly--he describes Mount Eden's Cabernet Sauvignon as ``hulking yet graceful, like a linebacker on skates.'' Overall, however, he is right on the mark, as when he defines winemaking: ``Fine wine is to fruit what the refined English country house is to rural living: a hybridization of studied pleasure with raw nature.'' Home Style Book Club alternate. (Oct.)