I think about my job of wine tasting and reviewing a lot. One aspect of it that I turn over in my mind is, Would my take on wines change if I reviewed only wines from prime coastal areas? Now, as you know, I taste everything that’s sent to me, whether it’s from the Central Valley or the Anderson Valley and all points inbetween.

California, being the vast state it is, produces a vast range of different quality wines. Some are truly dreadful. Some are world class. That’s no insult. I could say the same about France or Italy.

Since I taste everything that comes in, that means I’m tasting a lot of awful wine. Readers of Wine Enthusiast will never know just how many awful wines I actually taste, because it’s the magazine’s policy not to publish scores below 80, not even in the public online database. But there are plenty of them, believe me. And due to the limited number of pages in the Buying Guide, most scores from 80-82 don’t get published either. So let’s just say I’m tasting a great many flawed, indifferent wines.

I’ve often wondered how tasting bad wine affects my palate and my judgment. Does Rajat Parr taste bad wine? Does Parker? I honestly don’t know, but I doubt it. I think Rajat Parr and Mr. Parker taste only good wines — or, at least, wines that come from “superior” growing regions and are likely to be good if not great.

I put the word “superior” into quotation marks for a region. I don’t think anyone would differ if I said that Pauillac or Corton-Charlemagne are superior growing regions. I would hope no one would object if I say that Oakville is a superior growing region. Of course, that doesn’t mean everything from those areas is a great wine, but you get my point.

However, I want to be fair and delicate in how I phrase this. Is Lodi a superior growing region? Well, lots of people who make wine from there think it is. And maybe it will be, someday. But, to judge from my scores over many years — which is really the only objective way I have of knowing — Lodi is not a superior growing region. There may be good wines coming out of Lodi. There may be bargains. But for whatever reasons (we can debate that at another point), Lodi has not yet demonstrated that it is superior, the way Oakville is superior.

That means that the wines of Lodi are not as good as the wines of Oakville. What agonizes me is that there are some really smart, committed winemakers working in inland California whose efforts I support. Twisted Oak, for example. They’re in Calaveras County, which has not been a hotbed of quality. But they’re doing some really interesting things, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that just because they’re in Calaveras, their wines aren’t worthy of attention.

But I’m just trying to make a point. No one person can taste everything. So, if you’re a critic like I am, is it better for your palate to taste just wines from superior growing regions, or to at least try to taste everything, until the quantity of incoming becomes impossible? (Which, in my case, is not the case. Yet.)

I can see an argument on both sides. If I taste everything, I’m better able to draw distinctions between greatness and mediocrity. That seems obvious. On the other hand, tasting a lot of bland wine can have a coarsening effect on the palate. That can be detrimental to one’s ability to detect very fine differences, even between great wines, such as come from Oakville. That would not be a good thing to happen to a wine critic.

So I’m torn. I really wonder what my readers think. The great tasters of history and literature — Michael Broadbent, Hugh Johnson, Alexis Lichine, Professor Saintsbury, H. Warner Allen — tended to taste only great crus and growths. In our own time, the master sommeliers probably tend only to taste wines that, in their estimation, are likely candidates to be served in their white tablecloth restaurants. They taste, in other words, at the most rarified levels. Whereas I, Steve, in California, am the most democratic (with a small “d”) of tasters, treating the Central Valley and Napa Valley with precisely the same level of respect, namely, wrapped in a brown paper bag.

Would I do my job better if I gave up the “inferior” places and concentrated only on the coast? Would that be an insult to all the hard-working winemakers who labor inland? Would it make me — Steve — a better, more reliable taster? Like I said at the beginning, I think about my job a lot, and I’ve just taken you on a little tour of my mind.

My old friend David was complaining about wine yesterday. He doesn’t know much about it, despite my mentoring him for all these years, but he does know he’s looking for, and missing, “tannins.”

What does David mean when he talks about “tannins”?

He said he wants to feel something solid in his mouth when he sips a wine. Something grippy, structural. I told him that, if he didn’t mind spending $60 or $80 a bottle, there were some Barolos and Barbarescos I could recommend which would fulfill his tannin quotient. He replied that he buys Super-Tuscans, but even they seem too soft for him.

This set me to thinking. I probably use the word “soft” in my wine reviews more than any other adjective, except, possibly, for “dry.” (Maybe “fruity,” also.) Sometimes when I call a wine soft, it’s a compliment. But most of the time, it’s not. For example, I called an Esser 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon soft, but then I explained it “lacks structure, which makes it taste too sweet.” Sometimes, a wine without firm tannins and at least some decent acidity will taste sweet even it it’s technically dry.

This is the problem with so many California red wines. They’re too soft. That makes many of them taste alike, even when they’re made from varieties as different as Petite Sirah, Mourvedre, Syrah, Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel. We inherited from Old Europe the concept that different grape varieties should and do taste differently from each other. They’re grown in distinctive places to which they’re adapted their dna to thrive, and they express distinct qualities. I don’t suppose it has been easy, all these centuries, to mistake a Beaune Pinot Noir with a Saint-Estephe Cabernet Sauvignon (despite Harry Waugh’s wry “not since lunch” reply when asked if he’d ever confused Burgundy and Bordeaux).

But here in California it is very easy to confuse virtually any red variety for any other, with the possible exception of Pinot Noir. You’d think Sangiovese, that other “transparent” red wine, would show its telltale signature, but it doesn’t. Not when it’s made everywhere from Howell Mountain to Temecula, and the prevailing style is as I described an Andretti 2007: “Firm, chewy tannins and jammy black cherry flavors mark this dry red wine. It has nuances of currants and anise.” That could be almost anything, couldn’t it, even Pinot Noir.

Yet I must taste and review all the California wines that come my way and try to provide some help to readers. If so many things taste so similar, how do I distinguish between an 85 and a 92? My initial response would be “structure,” but that brings me back to David’s complaint about tannins. There are very few California wines that possess great structure. Even when I praise a wine’s structure, it must be seen as being relative: compared to most other wines, such and such a wine has a good structure. An example: of a J. Lohr 2006 Hilltop Cabernet Sauvignon, I wrote: “rich in tannic structure, with deep, complex flavors…” etc. Did I mean, then, to suggest it had the same tannin-acid structure that my colleague, Monica Larner, praised in Luciano Sandrone’s 2005 Cannubi Boschis, a Nebbiolo from Barolo? Of course not. But for a California Cabernet, and particularly one from Paso Robles, it showed good structure. This is what I mean when I stress that wine reviewing has to be done in context. Not “Is this a wine that can stand next to anything in the world” but “Is this a good example of its variety, region and winery?”

California grapegrowers and winemakers are aware of this problem of lack of structure, but some of them don’t seem to give a damn. They keep churning out soft wines that taste like melted dessert pastries, and I keep giving them low scores and wondering who in heaven’s name is buying this stuff. But check out this article from the current issue of Western Farm Press, which caters to the grower community. Researchers at Fresno State are tinkering with ways “to extract more anthocyanins, total phenols, tannins and color to improve wine quality,” which is to say, they’re developing “smaller berries [that] produce a higher skin-to-pulp ratio,” which in turn increases tannins, leading to better structure (as well as deeper flavors). Which giant wine company is Fresno State working with? Bronco. Good for Fred Franzia. He could probably sell anything he makes no matter what it is, so he deserves credit for trying to boost quality.

I’m still enjoying Secrets of the Sommeliers. There’s a section where Rajat Parr is talking about “the key to memorizing and comprehending wine styles from classic regions,” which is “to establish a single benchmark wine that represents a region or style.” Then, in analyzing any other wine of that variety or style, you compare it to that classic wine.

For example, here’s Rajat’s thinking process for understanding Bonnes Mares. “Does it taste like Pinot Noir?…Then, does it taste like Pinot Noir from Burgundy? Does it taste like Pinot Noir from the village of Chambolle-Musigny? And, finally, does it taste like Pinot Noir from the Chambolle-Musigny vineyard of Bonnes Mares?” If it does, “For me,” Rajat says, “that wine is Domaine Roumier Bonnes Mares.”

There are, to be sure, not all that many “classic” regions throughout the world where such an approach is possible. Rajat limits them to a top tier including Burgundy, the Loire, Champagne, Bordeaux and the Rhone; also, German Riesling (Mosel, Rheingau, Pflaz, Rheinhessen), Austrian Riesling and Gruner V., and Italian Piedmont, Tuscany and Veneto.  He makes allowances for Spanish Rioja, sherry and albarino, port and vinho verde and, from the New World, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Aussie Shiraz, Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and Oregon Pinot Noir.

We can nitpick. I thought it would be interesting to take Rajat’s approach to “comprehending wine styles” and apply it to California. What are the classic grape varieties and wines, areas, producers and vineyards that represent “benchmarks” for the state? This is easy to do, in principle; hard, in fact, mainly because California’s history is so much shorter than France’s. Also, because in California, you can legally grow anything anywhere, as opposed (notoriously) in Old Europe.

Still, difficult as the task may be, it must be attempted, starting with Cabernet Sauvignon. I will concur with Rajat that Napa Valley remains the alpha and omega of Cabernet — so far. I consider Rajat’s Four Questions (does it taste like Cabernet? Does it taste like Cabernet from Napa Valley? Does it taste like Cabernet from the Stags Leap District of Napa Valley? Does it taste like the Hillside Select of Shafer?) and make my decison. Shafer Hillside Select: a California Cabernet Sauvignon that is a benchmark.

Pinot Noir. Rajat doesn’t consider California Pinot classic, although he does let Oregon into the club (which must make Paul Gregutt ecstatic). But that’s Rajat’s club. Mine is open to California Pinot Noir. Is there a wine that tastes like Pinot Noir? Does it taste like Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley? Does it taste like Pinot Noir from the warmer Middle Reach of the Russian River Valley? Does it taste like the Rochioli Riverblock Pinot Noir? Yes, four times. Williams Selyem Rochioli Riverblock Pinot Noir, a classic benchmark.

I’ll stop with Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, because there are other issues to sort out. Because you can legally plant anything you want anywhere in California, we can’t say (as they can in France) that the best Pinot Noir must taste like it comes from Burgundy (or the Cotes de Nuits, or Bonnes Mares). It’s in no one’s interests to set up beauty contests between the Middle Reach and Green Valley, or Philo, or the central Santa Lucia Highlands, or the Santa Rosa Road corridor of the Santa, err, Sta. Rita Hills, or the Arroyo Grande, or Carneros, or anyplace else. Ditto with Cabernet, which you can’t even limit to Napa Valley; and, even if you could, you would have to take into consideration the wide range of terroirs, ranging from Howell Mountain to the Rutherford Bench, from the flatlands of Georges III to the top of Atlas Peak, and so on.

Of course, Rajat could have taken the same approach to, say, Clos de Vougeot, Chambertin, Musigny, etc., as he did with Bonnes Mares, which would complicate and lengthen his process. But he would not have had to include Pinot Noir from anyplace else in France, which simplifies it; Rajat is limited to a relatively smallish growing area. It may be — I can certainly see the day coming — when we will have to begin including Cabernets (and Cabernet-dominated blends) from Paso Robles, Happy Canyon, parts of Sonoma County (of course) and possibly other areas, among the “classic benchmarks” of California; and, of course, we’re already there when it comes to Pinot Noir.

Another difficulty in California, as I earlier said, is its briefness of history. Take a wine like Evening Land’s Occidental Vineyard Pinot Noir. It is extraordinary, classic — but since they’ve only released a single vintage (2007), can it be a benchmark?

I don’t take precisely Rajat Parr’s approach to analyzing wine. But it is a useful, instructive one. What do you look for in judging a glass of wine? What benchmarks exist in your head? Whether or not you use a 100 point system, or puffs, or stars, or some other icon, or just a vague feeling in your mind, how do you calibrate wine quality?

Most of the time we talk about high-scoring wines and why they got those numbers. Today I want to talk about the poops in the room, because I’ve been tasting a lot of them lately. Don’t know why August is turning out to be such a Monthus Horribilis, but it is.

Not everything, of course. Since the first of the month, I’ve had awesome wines from Chateau St. Jean, Etude, Gainey, Rusack, Justin, Cakebread and others, and the new sparklers from Schramsberg were, well, schwonderful, schmarvelous.

But there have been an awful lot of 80s, 81s and 82s, which under Wine Enthusiast’s system means “acceptable…simple with discussable deficiencies,” and with some of those low 80s, I was tempted to use our coup de grâce, 22, put them out of their misery and bury them.

What makes for an 80, 81 or 82? Most of them bore a California appellation. That tells me (a) the wines contained a lot of Central Valley grapes or juice, seldom a good thing, or (b) the wines were bulked out from producers who didn’t want to bottle the stuff on their own. That’s not a good thing, either.

The low scorers included Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, but there were as many Chardonnays as all the rest put together. My most common complaint: too fruit juicy. One of my favorite breakfast drinks is an orange-pineapple-mango juice blend I get at Whole Foods. I love it as fruit juice, but as wine, it doesn’t work. Too simple and sweet, and that’s the problem with too many Chardonnays these days. (I could say the same about some Sauvignon Blancs.)

With the reds, it was a different story. They were so thin, there was nothing going on, except alcohol, tannins and acidity. Not a good recipe for a wine. I figure this was due to overcropping in inferior vineyards, where the vines are stretched to give so much fruit, the berries just can’t develop much flavor. This also is suggested when you look at the high production numbers on some of these wines.

At average costs for all these wines at $7-$12, I guess the wine companies that put them out make their profit at this tier; and that profit, I suppose, helps defray the cost of producing higher-quality wine. But it’s dreary to have to review these dullards, and it’s always a challenge trying to figure out how to frame my text, without causing anyone undue discomfort. Sometimes I want to write, “Run! Get away quickly! Flee from this monstrosity!” but of course I can’t say that. So I’ve developed code words: “everyday,” “easy,” “useful,” and so on. Another thing I’ve been tempted to say is, “This is the kind of wine you drink in a paper cup at somebody’s party.” Would that be an insult? Probably the producer would consider it so, but I’ve had wines in paper cups at parties and didn’t feel at all insulted or lessened as a human being or a wine lover. If I had a great time at the party, I didn’t care what the wine was, and if I had a lousy time, it wouldn’t have mattered if the wine were ‘47 Cheval Blanc, served from Marie Antoinette’s slipper.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sommeliers, because last week I went to that big TopSomm 2010 thing in San Francisco, and then somebody sent me the book on sommeliers I blogged about yesterday. Somms and I both have the same job, on the surface: we both taste a lot of wine, and then make judgments about them. But on closer examination, our jobs are very different. I suspect I taste a lot more common and bad wine than most somms. The way I see it, part of my job is to find the silk purses among the sows’ ears that I can happily recommend to readers, who don’t want to have to spend $40, $50 or more for a decent bottle of wine. That’s what makes going through a month like August worth it.

I don’t drink a lot of sherry these days because I don’t have the time, and I regret that. Earlier this week, I drank — not tasted, but actually drank and thoroughly enjoyed — a sherry, and I’ll tell you about it in a moment, but first, some thoughts on why sherry isn’t very popular in the U.S., and why it should be. (I mean real sherry from Spain’s Jerez region.)

Back in the 1980s, when I was in grad school and had the opportunity to drink pretty much whatever I wanted, I drank a lot of sherry. I don’t remember why, because even then sherry was pretty obscure and unpopular. I think it was probably because the wine experts I was reading — Broadbent, Hugh Johnson, Alexis Lichine and others — loved it, so I figured it was something I should know about. I’d pay $6, $7 for finos and amontillados and manzanillas, the drier styles. At first I was puzzled by the strange, exotically oxidized taste that flor yeast gave to the wines. I remember a place in downtown San Francisco that used to serve sherry by the glass and I’d go there and have little tapas — salty Serrano ham, almonds, smoked salmon, ceviche, prawns. And it didn’t take me long to fall in love. The dryness, the way the acidity was so ultra-clean, that yeasty sourness that was so utterly unlike anything else I’d ever had. But then I turned into a hard-working wine writer, and sherry became, alas, a lesser part of my life.

A few weeks ago I had a Palmina Equipo Navazos La Bota de Fino #15, at RN74, and even though the meal had its problems, the wine was so good, I had two glasses. I wondered why more Americans don’t love dry sherry. I guess the taste is too weird for them; it does take some sophistication to appreciate; you have to make yourself learn to like it, and, when it comes to wine, Americans don’t want to make themselves do anything. They want the wine to come to them — flatter them, seduce them while they lay back and let it go to work on them. (I’m not getting too explicit here, am I?) Sherry doesn’t seduce anybody. It’s aloof, austere, proud, like a drag queen on stilettos. Sherry says, “Hey, I don’t care if you love me or hate me. Whatever.” Sherry is an acquired taste. But if you get a hankering for sherry, it turns into an addiction.

That’s why more people should fall in love with sherry. The wine bloggers in particular are in a good place to suggest it to their readers, Twitter followers and Facebook friends. There are plenty of inexpensive supermarket sherries from the likes of Hartley & Gibson, Lustau and the famous Tio Pepe that are well under $17, and are terrific. From that price range, you can work your way up. And by the way, the sherry process, including the magical solera system, is fascinating in itself, and is a basic part of any wine education.

The sherry I had recently was during a dinner at our Wine Enthusiast editorial meetings. The bottle was being passed around, and I more or less saw “sherry” on the label and poured myself a glass, being very thirsty that warm night. The first thing I noticed was how dark it was, an amber brown. I thought it might be sweet, but it wasn’t. It was bone dry and exquisite. It was Lustau’s non-vintage Almacenista Palo Cortado de Jerez, and the retail price was $42 last year, when my colleague, Mike Schachner, reviewed it in Wine Enthusiast. He gave it 94 points, and wrote:

A beautiful style of elevated Sherry that’s worth every cent if fine Sherry is to your liking. The nose is pure toffee, roasted nuts, apricot and mellow quince, while the key flavor is dried orange and the nuances hinted at by the aromas all reappear. Muscular but in perfect shape, with a finish as smooth as glass

Nice description. I especially like that “if fine Sherry is to your liking,” which tells me Mike understands these wines are not for everybody. I can’t exaggerate the beauty and thrill of this wine. I would have given it an even higher score than Mike, but maybe that’s because I drank it right after my go-cart race on the indoor track at Grand Prix New York, and I was sweaty and filled with adrenaline. That wine, with its 19% alcohol, was just the brace I needed.

If there’s one wine I wish I could drink more of, it’s sherry, especially a thriller like the Lustau.