What the !@#$%^&*!? has happened to California Chardonnay? (A rant)

[Jason]

I think its safe to say that the Cali Chard producers do not subscribe to the "less is more" approach. One fact which has gone unsaid is the inherent difference between France's and our own climate. Our industry jumped on the 100% ML bandwagon because it was the "Burgundian" thing to do.
The problem starts when our wines are starting with much more fruit and much less acid. When you put 100% of the wine through ML, your acid is reduced by 50%, thus producing a super creamy, flabby wine. This is where the balance issue starts from.
Instead of thinking independantly and modifying the methods to meet our own climate, we blindly followed tradition from the Old World.
I think the reason it stuck (commercially) is cultural. Europeans rarely drink wine without food, so their wines are generally higher in acid, lower in fruit.
Americans, however, were not brought up on wine and regularly drink it by itself, which works in favor of the Cali style.
I am surprised that no one has commented on the marketers gettings their hands on Cali Sauv Blanc. Since truer examples of this grape did not fly in the 80's, we have tweaked it to taste like Chard wannabe.
Taste Chalk Hill SB and then a Sancerre and tell me we have not used some poetic license with this grape. Talk about out of character.
Run into one of the full bore ML examples from Cali in a blind tasting, and you'll know the meaning of confusion.