The last large post on California wines was at the end of 2025. Then the madness of getting search to work, and now I am still getting through all the posts. It was time to get the next big California post out! This will not be a retrospective, like I did here. This will be more like the 2024 post I did here, covering the California wines I have recently enjoyed.

All of these wines came to me; I have not visited any new wineries since the last post (when I visited a few). Still, I always prefer tasting at home because it gives me time to watch these wines evolve, especially the CRAZY QPR (Quality-to-Price Ratio) GREAT wines from Shirah Wines!

If there is ANY wine you buy from this post (AND NO, my posts are informational, as you all know; they are not meant to drive sales anywhere) – BUY the Shirah wines I have below! NO BRAINER! Of course, I get nothing for this; I am here to help the readers know what I like and what I think is a good deal!

The plan here is to list the wineries and their wines in the order I tasted them (since I did taste some wines more than once). As I stated before, Covenant continues to impress, as does Shirah, with some of their new wines, which are pretty mind-blowing!

Many thanks to each and every winery here for putting up with me and sharing their excellent wines.

My overall feelings about the California 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 vintages

The funny thing, sorry for the slight aside, last decade all the good vintages came in even vintages, 2014, 1016 (to an extent), 2018, and so on. Some think 2019 flipped it – I do not. The 2021 vintage, as many of us have said, crushed it! The 2023 is solid, and the 2025 is looking good. So, in total, the odds are looking MUCH better, and this decade, so far, is the odd-year decade. The 2020 season (a horrible throw-away vintage given the fires and such) was just a hard pass. Then you get the odd-numbered-vintages, 2021/2023/2025, and we are on a roll. Time will tell. So far, 2026 is gorgeous, and I hope I haven’t just jinxed it! I like these cooler temps!

Let us start with the facts: the 2021 vintage for California was the best I can remember. Yes, better than 2012 or 2014, and all around, everyone, and every winery came out with fantastic wines. Why? Because God gave each winery enough time not to screw it up, and even when they wanted to screw it up, he made sure they could not! DONE! Look, God gave them a raw deal in 2020, across the state – and we all know it! So, in 2021, he made up for it in spades (whatever that means)!

The 2021 vintage stood out in BOTH the Mevushal and non-Mevushal wine categories. For white and red wines. It was a shockingly good season all around, and everyone came out smelling like roses!