I like brie, that famously runny, aromatic cheese that comes from the Brie department of central France. Brie and Chablis wine, which hails from the Yonne department just to Brie’s south, have been a historic pairing for centuries (although Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher wrote, in the Wall Street Journal, “we wouldn’t say we’re crazy about the combination of Brie and Chablis”).

Yet “brie and Chablis” (or “wine and cheese”) has long been a derisory term for liberals, and no liberals in America arouse the wrath of the right more than San Franciscans. When did wine and cheese become the odious signifiers of those unpatriotic, deviant, nattering nabobs of negativity, the liberals?

I trace it back to the split between wine and beer cultures that Europe saw in the Middle Ages. Where winegrapes could be cultivated in the warmer Mediterranean south, people were Latinized: less warlike, fond of siestas, food, dancing, conversation, good living and lovemaking. In the north, where it was too cold for vitis vinifera to grow, people turned to beer; they were Continental tribes, descendants of Huns, Vikings and Slavs, a warrior society not keen on art or philosophy. They preferred drinking beer from the skulls of their enemies.

We see this split echoed today in America, where Dr. Vino last week wondered “…how did light beer come to be the choice of NFL viewers?” Simple. The NFL reflects the Prussianized, warlike, hyper-masculinized psyche many American males believe themselves to embody (or wish they did). Wine is more the beverage of effete people who go to the Opera.

Wine and cheese receptions have been a mainstay of politics on both sides for a century. When the Harvard Crimson wrote about a Stuart Udall fundraiser in 1976 (Udall, a Democratic Arizona Congressman, was running in the primaries against Jimmy Carter), the writer described an event he went to as “a typical wine-and-cheese gathering.” Nothing Republican or Democratic about it, just bipartisanly political. But by 1980, the phrase somehow had become anti-Democrat, although when “cheese” was replaced by “brie” and “wine” by “chablis,” I will leave to future historians to figure out. When John Anderson, a Republican congressman from Illinois who was a sort of Ross Perot-style maverick, was running for President, he was portrayed by the right as not conservative enough. A columnist for the Washington Post, Mark Shields [himself a moderate Democrat], wrote: “For John Anderson to be a true challenger for the presidency, he cannot be either a ‘spoiler’ or simply the favorite of the brie-and-chablis set.” Did Shields pluck that phrase out from the ether? Undoubtedly it had antecedents. Some think that Leonard Bernstein’s famous party for the Black Panthers, in 1966, was the prototype; that fête was endlessly parodied by Republicans as bleeding heart “limousine liberal” pretension, and, after all, Lenny (the ultimate liberal Democrat), was a Jew, plus he was bisexual, and his beautiful foreign-born wife, Felicia, the quintessential Upper West Side hostess, served wine and “Little Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts,” according to Tom Wolfe, who wrote about it.

Little Roquefort cheese morsels! It was perhaps understandable that the right confused roquefort for brie, which may have been easier for them to spell. How easy for pretzel and beer loving Republicans to satirize that citified appetizer (and with crushed nuts, to boot). By 1982, “the wine and cheese crowd” had entered the political lexicon as a metaphor for Democrats: here’s The Texas Monthly describing “the hatred that the Okies from Muskogee feel for the wine-and-cheese” crowd” to explain Texas’s transition from FDR stronghold to Reagan country.

They’re still doing it. Yesterday, as the world famously knows, the San Francisco Forty Niners played the New York Giants for the NFC championship. Just before the game, a New York Daily News columnist, Filip Bondy, wrote that Niner fans are “overrated,” likening them to “Strange, exotic plants”, “not fat enough” and “softer” than Giants fans–in other words, San Franciscans are insufficiently brutal. Bondy was making a funny, of course, but the tweak was enough to prompt the San Francisco Chroncle’s sportswriter, Scott Ostler, to pen in response, “49ers fans’ courage not measured by Brie and wine,” he headlined, although Bondy used neither of those terms. But then, you can’t blame San Franciscans for being a little defensive after decades of getting their butts kicked by the right. As recently as 2008, Pat Buchanan (who knows something about demonizing his political opponents) still was ranting about “the chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco,” even though by then, the characterization was shopworn. Incidentally, being “brie-and-chablis San Franciscans” didn’t seem to hurt the 2010 Giants or, for that matter, five Super Bowl-winning San Francisco 49er teams (1981, 1984, 1988, 1989, 1994).

Yes, San Francisco lost last night. They played like mensches, and I hope after the game they went wherever they went and enjoyed some well-deserved wine and cheese.

It’s an old saw by now: Sonoma County winemakers lament that when they’re on the road, promoting their wines, people ask them, “Where in Napa Valley is Sonoma?”

It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad. Readers of this blog obviously know all about Sonoma County, and how it has 11 different American Viticultural Areas. But my readers are a special breed. The fact is that the majority of wine drinkers in America and abroad don’t know enough about our geography. That’s not their fault, of course. Why should they? Instead, it’s the responsibility of the Sonomans to engage in an educational campaign to let people know that Sonoma is not in Napa Valley and has nothing to do with Napa Valley (except that the two areas are next door to each other).

Now, it turns out that the Sonoma County Vintners is doing just that. The Santa Rosa Press Democract wrote yesterday that a coalition of some 50 “local wine industry leaders” from Sonoma worked together last year to come up with a plan. I’m not privy to the details, but the article says the committee “selected three words to define the wine region’s character: genuine, independent and adventurous.”

Educational campaigns of the sort the Sonomans are attempting are very difficult. You have to un-do the incorrect perceptions people have, which experience teaches us is extraordinarily hard, and then replace them with correct perceptions. You have to communicate to millions of people, which in a huge country like the U.S. is almost impossible and also terribly expensive, so fractured are our communities and media. And if you roll in foreign markets, the job’s even more challenging. It can be made a little easier by narrowing your focus, so instead of trying to talk to everyone, you zoom in on a select audience; call it the “cable TV approach.” It sounds like the Sonomans are doing just that: they will target “’experience seekers’ who enjoy traveling and dining out,” in other words, people with money in their pocket to pay premium Sonoma prices.

I wonder about that “genuine, independent and adventurous” thing. It sounds to me like it came out of a committee. Yet the devil’s in the details. “Genuine” is good: it implies that Sonoma wine comes from a real place that’s ideal for fine wine production, and made by real, passionate people, all of which is true. “Independent” is a little murky. Independent of what–big corporations? That’s not strictly true; Sonoma is no more “independent” than anyplace else, as far as I can tell. “Independent” is a nice word, but what is the message the Sonomans hope to communicate? Then there’s “adventurous.” I can practically hear the discussion that led up to that: “Let’s be the maverick to Napa Valley’s mainstream.” Since they can’t be Napa Valley, they can be the scrappy alternative, the choice of wine lovers who don’t want to go the predictable route. This is a little risky, since there’s always a downside involved in adventures. After all, some adventures go horribly awry. But in general, “adventurous” works in advertising, especially with a younger demographic that’s into taking chances and exploring new things.

I hope the new marketing approach works. Sonoma County has had this identity problem for years, compounded by a certain tension between the sub-appellations (Dry Creek Valley, Russian River Valley, Alexander Valley, etc.),  individual wineries and the Mothership. It’s been hard for all the parties to work together in harmony; in this, Sonoma’s been a little behind some of the other wine counties in California. It will take time, but I do believe the Sonomans can make it work. It’s hard selling a phony message, but in this case, the message is true: Sonoma really does produce some of the greatest wine in California. And it’s not in Napa Valley.

If you go to the Calafia Cafe, in Palo Alto, you won’t have to wait for a server to take your order. Instead, you just call up the menu on the touch screen mobile pad on your table, look at hi-res digital images of the foods, and then punch in your selections. Let’s say it’s the clams and udon noodles for an appetizer, then the grilled hanger steak for the main course. Your friends do the same thing. Your orders go right to the kitchen. While you’re waiting for the food, you might play a social game on the same tablet; your table’s high scorer at trivia gets $1 off the cost of dessert. Of course, when your food is ready, a real live human being brings it to your table–the tablet can’t do that. But when the meal’s over, you can pay for it with a swipe of your credit card–no waiting for a busy waiter to have to notice you’re ready to leave. You can enter your email and get a digital receipt promptly sent. And, since the night is still young, you can browse the tablet and discover clubs, bars and so on that are right in the neighborhood.

The tablet is called a Presto, and it’s manufactured by E la Carte, which was started up in 2008 out of MIT, and now has offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Chicago and New York. They’ve raised venture capital from angel investors, and Calafia isn’t the only restaurant that uses Presto and similar devices, both in this country (L.A.’s Umami Burger, for example) and overseas, in Japan and Europe. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “chains across the country are signing on [to Presto]. Creator Rajat Suri expects that soon every mass-market, mid-range restaurant and bar – and even some independent operations – will start using the Presto or similar technology.”

Does it mean actual waiters will soon be anachronisms? It’s hard to envision a time when somebody won’t have to schlep the food from the kitchen to the table. But a busboy (or a robot, for that matter) could do that. And you wouldn’t have to tip a busboy (much less a robot) 20% of the tab just for carrying a few plates of food.

How about wine? Restaurants already are featuring touch screen devices for the wine list, instead of a dirty old booklet with everyone’s germs on it. Barbacco, a trendy trattoria in San Francisco’s Financial District, was the city’s first. “Diners…browse through [wine] selections on screen, and can store a number of possible choices. Ordering will still take place the old-fashioned way — through a real live human being,” the Chronicle’s Jon Bonné reported. But is it so hard to imagine a future generation of tablets that not only list all the wines, but interactively suggest pairings? Maybe you order Barbacco’s paccheri, a pork ragu with plenty of parmigiano reggiano. You’re not sure what to drink with it. But the tablet is. It may suggest a nine-year old Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, from Emidio Pepe, explaining that the wine’s tannins are resolved, and its acidity and extract will stand up to the food’s richness. You look at the price: $110. Ouch. You ask the tablet to suggest something less pricey. Back comes a 2006 Tuscan Sangiovese, from Querceto di Castellina, which the tablet tells you is similarly full-bodied and dry, with acidity to cut through the oiliness. And the price is a more reasonable $48.

Deal.

Is there any reason this can’t happen, thus eliminating the [sometimes uncomfortable] dance diners are forced to perform with sommeliers? The Chronicle article suggests it will. “Eventually, [Presto] will tell diners what kinds of wines they like based on a personality quiz.” That sounds kind of silly (“Are you the type that hates to ask for directions? Then choose a Pinot Noir”), but there already are rudimentary “computerized sommeliers” on the market. For example, at Hong Kong’s Landmark Oriental Mandarin Hotel, they advertise “a computerised sommelier that will recommend food and wine pairings by region, taste or price.” With advances in A.I. coming fast and furious, who’s to say that in a generation the human sommelier won’t be seen as an charming relic of a bygone era, like trolley conductors, gas lamp lighters and doctors who make house calls?

If you live in Northern California, it’s been topic #1 for the last 2 months: Cold nights, mild to warm days and barely a drop of rain. December was the second driest in modern times, and so far, January hasn’t seen a single drop of the wet stuff.

It’s been so dry that people are starting to use the “d” word, as in drought.

This comes on the heels of heavy rains last October, which had everybody fretting about the vintage, and worried about a repeat of the 2010-2011 winter, which was extraordinarily wet. No luck. In my vintage diary, I noted only two instances of precipation in December: once on the 12th (“very, very light”) and again on the 30th (“Light rain, less than 1/10th of an inch”). Other than that, nada.

This map from NOAA suggests visually how severe things have been, with all of Northern California north of the Central Coast in the red “Drought to persist or intensify” part.

It’s an increasingly important story, and scientists are starting to express something akin to alarm. The Sacramento Bee quoted California’s chief hydrologist: “It just hangs on and on and on,” he said, referring to the high pressure system that won’t budge, sending storms to the north and south of us. KQED-FM today featured a top NASA climatologist and an official from the California Department of Water Resources, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say you could hear extreme concern in their voices. The Water Resources lady reminded us that the absence of precipitation doesn’t mean only that reservoirs are under pressure; actually, they’re in pretty good shape, thanks to last year’s snowmelt from the Sierra. No, the immediate problem is in industries that rely on instant water from the sky, such as grazing. Cattle need to eat pasture grasses. With no rain, the winter grasses are drying up. Bloomberg News today reported “short-term Severe Drought” in parts of California, “as impacts to forage conditions in rangeland areas are significant.” Not only that: “Wildland fire awareness is increasing in California as well.”

Wildfires in January?

There are implications for grapes, too. “…if the warm, dry spell continues, it could cause an ‘early bloom’ on apple trees and grapevines, exposing the tender green plant tissue to possible frost damage,” the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported.

But change might finally be coming. Just yesterday, the weather people are saying the pattern could break by next week, with “significant changes in flow over the Eastern Pacific” that “should allow a series of storm systems to track across the North State.” That’s great news for crops and water supplies, and I know I should be glad. But in a way, I’m sad. It’s been so great enjoying the Springlike weather. In Oakland, when you get in a sunny place out of the wind around 2 p.m. (the warmest part of the day), it actually feels hot on your skin, like summer. Gus has been loving it. He doesn’t like rain. Neither do I. But we’ll be thankful when Old Man Winter returns.

What will happen when the Chinese discover Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon?

For the answer, we look to Bordeaux. China is now Bordeaux’s largest export market, a position long held by Britain. As a result, prices for Lafite, Latour and company, already high, have soared, placing those wines effectively beyond the reach of all but the world’s one percenters, including those in China. Chinese people are buying up Bordeaux chateaux, with at least six now so owned. It’s impossible to forecast an end to China’s Boreaux-mania. Indeed, there’s no reason at all why it should stop. It’s just getting started.

The laws of supply and demand being what they are, it’s likely that prices of the top Bordeaux will continue to rise. They’ve been going up for years, anyhow, making this one of the longest sustained periods of steady increases in Bordeaux’s long history, to judge by Eddie Penning Rowsell’s record-keeping in The Wines of Bordeaux.

But even a wealthy Chinese collector must blanch to some of these prices. What happens when top tier Bordeaux starts to be too expensive in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai? People look to second tier Bordeaux. That’s exactly what we see happening: Decanter just reported that, despite some softening in pricing for Lafite and other First Growths on the auction market, prices for “blue chip second wines” are “robust,” a phenomenon that “is almost certainly due to the Chinese market.” The Chinese, it seems, will pay more for a wine like Carruades de Lafite (from Chateau Lafite Rothschild) or Chateau Margaux’s Pavillon Rouge than will an American or European.

So we already see incredibly high pricing pinching the prices of First Growths in China, leading to increased demand for “lesser” but still prestigious Bordeaux. What does it mean for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon?

Pretty obvious. After Bordeaux, what’s the most famous region in the world for Bordeaux-style wines? You got it. Chinese interest in Napa Valley is on the rise. A delegation of Chinese wine industry types recently visited the valley, and of course Yao Ming is going to further raise Napa’s visibility in his homeland when he starts selling his own wine there.

You can see where this is heading. it can be only a matter of time before the top ranked Napa Cabernets hit China bigtime. (I suspect the Chinese will have a harder time with Meritage-style wines with proprietary names.) The Napa Valley Vintners, sensing opportunities, last year sent a major league delegation to the PRC; it included Amuse Bouche, Rubicon, Dalla Valle, Wilver Oak, Moone-Tsai and Heitz. Janet Viader, who also was part of the mission, told the Napa Register on her return, “I was very inspired to pursue opening the Chinese market for us.”

Truer words never were spoken.

It’s not that I’m uninterested in the replacement of Robert Parker by his protege, Anotonio Galloni, in reviewing California wines. I am interested. If Jim Laube gave up California, I’d be interested in that, too. If I gave up California, or rather my coastal part of it (I happily share the rest of the state with Virginie Boone), I assume that would be a fairly significant story for the wine press to cover. However, what I have no interest in is what some of my fellow wine bloggers are doing: treating this Galloni thing as some sort of epochal shift that’s making History, like a Presidential election. They’re interpreting every move Galloni makes, every word he writes, with the mesmerized fascination of a Kremlinologist, or a Vatican watcher trying to make sense of some newly elected Pope, or the scrutiny of a Supreme Court reporter discerning which way a new appointee leans.

People, get a grip! Galloni is not the new Pope! He’s a nice-looking dude covering California wine, the new kid in town. We should look forward to welcoming him to the Golden State, if we get the opportunity to meet him, as we never did with Parker, who traveled here as though he were Mick Jagger. But he’s just another one of us, no more or less important than anyone else.

Yet I have read, with astonishment and bemusement, the fevered speculations of certain wine bloggers in covering Antonio’s first Cali reviews. Here’s Terroirist, deconstructing them as if they contained clues to the existence of life on Mars. Here’s Blake Gray, breathlessly combing through the scores, like a mathematician in search of the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem. Here’s Alder Yarrow, admittedly a little less discombobulated, but still trying to have it both ways by arguing that–while Galloni’s coming means “nothing”–he’s going to headline it anyway.

As Macbeth might have said of all this hyperventilated reportage, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Not that I am calling the three aforementioned fine bloggers idiots! Highest respects! Blog on, brothers! But we bloggers collectively have got to get past the pall that Parker/Wine Advocate threw on the California wine scene for too long–one that the industry accepted too blithely. It was unhealthy, a dark, smothering cloud of choking soot that kept California wine from evolving normally. What we need in California, as the state and the country emerge from the Recession, is a free, fair, open conversation about California wine: what it is, what it isn’t, what it should be, what it could be, if only it were allowed to develop unimpaired, in a free market. Unimpaired is exactly what it wasn’t during the Parker era. One voice, for the most part, defined reality, thus paralyzing the free market into a talibaneque stylistic monopoly.

I was hopeful, when I heard of Parker’s impending retirement from my state, that multiple voices could be heard. But what happens when multiple voices now conspire to all talk about the same thing? Same old same old: The Wine Advocate, written by whomever, continues to dominate the chitchat.

You won’t find me deciphering Galloni. I don’t care what he says. I didn’t read Parker and I won’t read A.G. It’s not that I’m ruling out any mention of Galloni forever. I’ll write about him on an as-needed basis, the same way I’ll write about Jon Bonné or Jordan Mackay or Charlie Olken or Laube or Joe Blow, if I feel like it. But I’m not going to obsess on Galloni any more than I will on 1WineDude. (Happy new year, Joe!)

Make no mistake, the old order in California is as dead as 2011. If it was bizarre for bloggers to suffer from Parker Obsessive Disease, it’s even weirder for them to come down with a self-inflicted case of Galloni Obsessive Disease. So bloggers, if you want to take the cure, just let Dr. Steve know. He’s here to help you.