Personally, I like the idea. Good idea for a Snooth article too. The Napa growers modeled themselves on Bordeaux in the 1970s and 1980s, but it's long past time to look for more options. They've been interested in pinot noir and chardonnay since the beginnings of the modern industry, but only recently have been able to create any buzz about "Rhone" varieties, notwithstanding the fact that except for syrah, the next three major ones in the Rhone actually happen to be Spanish. And because of their climate and sun, they'd be better off looking at Spanish and Portuguese grapes IMO. And southern Italian. They've proven that zin can grow well so what about some of the others, like Nero d"Avola, etc?

There was a lot of interest at one time but the concept didn't take hold. Personally, I think it's because they planted willy-nilly. "I've got a hillside, let's plant sangiovese." I've only had a few that were really good, but Palmina does a pretty nice job with all of theirs, Fife at one time was experimenting with Italian grapes and put out a pretty good barbera and charbonono, and a few others have done well.

I'd love to see them plant nebbiolo in Washington state, and more tempranillo in CA and Washington, rather than cab, cab, cab, cab, merlot. It's why McRea vineyards in WA is one of my faves - who else is bottling a monovarietal counoise?

My biggest problem with Italian wines from Cali is that I just enjoy the same wines from Italy so much that when I have them from Cali I find it hard to judge them on their own values. I find myself comparing them to their Italian counterparts more than anything else and it tends to leave me disappointed.

On a funny note. I once threw a Palmina Barbera into a blind tasting of Italian Barbera's and all but one of the tasters rated the Palmina as the best wine of the group.