"Recently, I've come into closer-than-usual contact with California corporate wine types. It's easy to parody corporate wine types.... But what I hadn't understood before was their ever-present fear. Really, they're terrified of you.... Whatever you, the customer, want is what they strive to supply. But precisely because their primary interest is the marketplace, corporate wine types are always playing a game of catch-up. It's a long time from vine to wine to market.

"The power of the suits has only grown with the vastly increased corporate ownership in today's wine world. And it's given rise to a new way of classifying wines. Never mind grape variety or terroir. We now have just two types of wine: wines of fear and wines of conviction....

"What do wines of fear taste like? In a word, 'predictable.'...

"All of this is thrown into sharp relief when you taste wines of conviction. With a wine of conviction, predictability is absent. The wine tastes original."