[14] The book was based in part on a 2010 article [15] he wrote for Saveur and reflected his years of work at the Chronicle, as a transplant from the East Coast in 2006, confronting what at the time he found to be "the shortfalls of California wine: a ubiquity of oaky, uninspired bottles and a presumption that bigger was indeed better."
It defined a new generation of California winemakers as those with "an enthusiasm for lessons learned from the Old World, but not the desire to replicate its wines; a mandate to seek out new grape varieties and regions; and, perhaps most important, an ardent belief that place matters."
The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Bonné has been positioned perfectly to observe the profound pendulum swing in style and attitude that has occurred among California winemakers over the last decade.
"[17] One writer concluded that the book relied too much on broad, sweeping generalizations of the wine industry and that the trend had been an ongoing process for years.
The New York Times wrote that Bonné had succeeded "in extracting the answers from decades of overwrought expert instruction and presenting them in a clear, easygoing manner.