NOT all the stars of sunny California strut their stuff on celluloid - others prefer to reveal their sought-after talent in a glass.

And it's not just the grapes that are the celebs here in the golden state - certain winemakers became household names in the experimental and creative days of the 1960s and 70s when the industry began to expanded and alter at a frenzied pace.

Names such as Robert Mondavi, who collaborated with Mouton-Rothschild in 1979 to create the highly priced Opus One, the first great Franco-California joint venture wine.

Who can forget Paul Masson with his Californian Carafes? Advertised almost nightly on the box by Lord Peter Whimsey and his butler Jeeves, they became extremely popular - sadly, more for the multi-purpose, NHS-like bedside container than the wine.

Asda offered for tasting the recently re-launched versions in that famous receptacle which was extremely sporting of them as I know they could have chosen other wines more suited to our times.

Or could they (see tasting notes below)?

Too many British wine importers and drinkers think the USA is California.

Of course, there are other parts of the USA which produce wine, from Connecticut to Texas, but none yet makes as much good wine as does that one State on the west coast.

For wine purposes California can be divided into three distinct regions.

The North Coast differs from the Central Coast and both are far cooler than the hot, bulk-producing Central Valley.

The latter is immense, with more than 36,500 square miles of flat agricultural land producing 90 per cent of California's grapes, mostly used for cheap wines.

Although California has been making wine for around 165 years, the modern wine industry has grown from scratch in scarcely more than 40 years and very nearly did not survive into the late 20th century.

Founded by Franciscan missionaries in the 1770s and making wines of some renown by the late 19th century, the vine louse Phylloxera had destroyed all the Vitis vinifera vines (the only ones suitable for fine wine production) by 1900.

Prohibition, the Great Depression and the Second World War impeded all endeavours to recreate the vineyards to grow quality wine and, by the 1950s, generations of Americans had grown up with little or no understanding of fine wine.

A disastrous repeat was averted only a few years ago when the destructive Phylloxera bug returned to the West Coast in the mid 1990s.

Prime sites were laid to waste as the creatures happily munched through the vineyards once again - but the silver lining came in replanting in the right places with superior rootstock.

At the dawn of a new century California again confidently offers the world good quality cheap wines and startles it with a handful of luxury wines of brilliant quality attracting grossly extravagant prices.

It was reported recently that the designer cult-wine phenomenon of California has reached ludicrous and, while its economy booms, seemingly unstoppable proportions.

Unbelievably, Californians are queuing for the opportunity to pay around $750 for the 1996 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon, a three-year-old Napa Valley wine in only its fifth vintage.

The American magazine Wine Spectator, not one to write one page where ten will do, recently devoted more than 20 pages to what it identified as California's top cult wines - all nine of them.

Thankfully, it is the more affordable wines we will always be concerned with in this column and the changes here are just as obvious.

If you still say you don't like the California style - it's too big, it's too fat and top-heavy with taste - then you haven't tasted it recently.

Acidity is there, the oak sweetness is turning and has turned in many cases to the more exciting smoky, savoury oak of Burgundy.

The alcohol levels now keep your head clear enough to be able to articulate important phrases like 'another bottle please', without sounding as if somebody has just removed your teeth.

I remember those earlier wines and I remember the tastings.

They were usually set up as 'Old World versus New World' battles, and the objective was always to prove that California was better than Europe.

And that's usually how it turned out.

Firstly, that the tastings were usually loaded in favour of the strong, brash flavours of the California valleys.

Second, that comparison must be like for like and, in the late 1970s/80s, the styles of French and California wines weren't even similar, let alone comparable.

But, California aspired to the great wines in Europe.

These were the models that an ambitious winemaker had to beat.

The exciting thing about California now is that the European lessons of subtlety, balance, perfume and even beauty in a wine seem to have been taken to heart so quickly and even built upon.

See Food and Drink Wine Selection article on this site for details.