I’ve just finished watching another episode of this great series. It follows on from last year’s foray into France for Oz and James. James, being a wine novice and usual presenter of BBC’s Top Gear and Oz, being a wine buff and appearing on plenty of British television food and wine programmes.

The first series dealt mainly with Oz showing James a variety of vineyards and  tasting a large selection wines in France during a month spent there. James, a total novice when it came to wine, gained an appreciation for it, but also exposed alot of pomposity and snobbery that exists.

In this series, they’re off to the new world, touring California in a 42ft monster motorhome. To date, its been very interesting. To be honest, I have avoided Californian wines in the past, nothing had grabbed me tastewise from that region. But I’m now interested in trying a variety of the bottles they’ve sampled on the way.

They’ve met an eclectic mix of wine producers and vineyard owners. They’ve sampled very rare, specialised and expensive wines and also, wine from the largest producer: 2 buck Chuck, whos wine costs only 2 dollars a bottle.

James’ mission is to find a decent bottle of wine from California that costs less than £10. Oz’s abhorance of the money making mass production in favour of smaller, more specialised wineries is obvious. They are two very different characters who personalities clash on occasion but who ultimately appear to get on. It makes for great TV.

Aswell as the wine aspect to the show, it does give you a good feel of California, the people and the landscape.

The original series in France went a long way to demystifying the whole French wine set up, labelling, grape types and what goes into making different wines and affecting their prices. It dealt with and explained clearly the “terroir” influence on wines. This series is introducing me to an entire range of wines that I would previously have avoided.  

I hope it continues and that they head to Italy next as I am completely ignorant on Italian wines. Will be watching wherever they go.