For years the question in winemaking was how technology could make wine better. This was especially true if the wine was Californian. When California cabernet sauvignon bested the best of Bordeaux--in a legendary blind tasting, the "Judgment of Paris," convened by the English wine merchant Steven ­Spurrier--it was a moment of great national pride at the time of America's Bicentennial, and it was achieved in part because California winemakers had used technology in ways tradition-bound French winemakers would not. As California wine became respectable, Silicon Valley millionaires bought vineyards in Napa and Sonoma counties. California wine and tech soon enjoyed a happy marriage.

Two generations of winemakers came out of the University of California at Davis armed with the latest knowledge of clones, viticulture, and gas chromatography. With their chemical toolbox, they could fix any flaw--a dry year, overripe grapes left on the vine a day or two too long, sour wine. The descendants of the original Hungarian and Italian immigrants who first planted grapes in Napa and Sonoma may have been slow to sign on to the new methods, but not the high-tech grandees who were living the California dream by buying land and putting their names on bottles of wine. New money is always attracted to old vineyards (even if California's vineyards aren't really that old).