Thomas Jefferson is singing in his grave. Americans are drinking more wine than beer for the first time, and as a country, we are about to overtake France as the largest wine consumer. Jefferson, America's first wine advocate, believed that, "in a country where the price of wine is dear and spirits cheap, no one is sober."

The increased popularity and availability of wine in the modern world has helped wine shed its snob connotation. Wine is no longer only for the elite; a decent bottle of wine is readily available at a price approaching a bottle of Absolut vodka. But the danger in wine lately has been one of a globalization of style. Ripeness, cellar techniques and extreme applications of oak can result in a sea of wines with the same boring personality.

The wide range of grape varietals and how they can exhibit a unique sense of place are what make wine fun and interesting. I love exuberant cabernet cauvignon from Napa Valley as much as I love red and sappy chianti classico from Tuscany. But I don't want my chianti classico to taste like Napa cabernet. Wine should embody the flavor of its varietal and the specific place from which it hails. But too much ripeness and oak can erase a grape's variety and obliterate that sense of place.

Sauvignon blanc used to taste crisp and tangy. Then someone started fermenting it in oak instead of stainless steel, and I couldn't tell it apart from chardonnay. Cabernet snuck into to the blend with Chianti's Sangiovese, and the latter lost its personality. Pinot noir started to get picked so late and soaked so long on the skins, I couldn't see its difference from syrah. Someone decided expensive French oak barrels made all wine taste better; instead, it made all wine taste ubiquitous.

The popularity of some grapes like chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon; the use of oak chips and oak powder to add oak flavor; adding acid and water to correct raisinated grapes; reverse osmosis; and spinning cones (a controversial steam-distillation apparatus that reduces alcohol content) are technological advances in wine similar to the food equivalent of McDonald's being able to freeze, transport and serve the same hamburger patty to billions of people in dozens of countries.

While ripe and highly oaked wines do have their appeal and place — such as cocktail hour — in general, I prefer a wine that has more compelling notes, one that does not reveal itself so obviously. An overly ripe wine drenched in oak has less of a chance of revealing an intrinsically interesting side. I prefer a wine that quietly expresses itself, one that makes me go back to the glass in wonder and say, "What was that?" And a little less alcohol, please — I would like to enjoy more than one glass tonight!

Ripeness in wine is a good thing, but over the past decade or so, many winemakers have gone too far in applying the character to their wines. Back in the '70s and '80s, many Napa producers picked their grapes too early (trying to mimic Bordeaux's lower levels of alcohol) and produced wines that were under-ripe, overly tannic and harsh. Around the same time, Joe Heitz of Heitz Cellars said, "Why are we trying to make Bordeaux? Why don't we make the best Napa cabernet we can?" He was onto something.

In the early '90s, "hang-time" became a winemaker's buzzword, and the style of Napa cabernet changed for the better. Grapes ripen easily in California, with their sugars achieving a level necessary to ferment into wine. But along the way, California producers — blessed with a climate that does not present devastating rain in September and October — discovered they could let their grapes hang even longer. More hang-time allowed the grape's skins, seeds and stems to achieve a higher level of phenolic ripeness — changes in grape tannins, as opposed to the breakdown of acids and the accumulation of sugars, which is commonly referred to as "sugar ripeness".

During fermentation, these riper phenolics are extracted to make a wine with darker color, richer flavor and smoother tannins — but with higher alcohol and lower acidity. This wine is then married to lots of young oak that is easily integrated.

As such, Napa cabernet sauvignon and much of California wine became a stylistic symbol of power and exuberance: ripeness and lots of new oak. Too many California producers, however, went too far down the ripeness/extraction/new oak path, resulting in a homogenization of their final product.

Meanwhile, across the pond, with a string of warmer vintages unfuddled by rain this past decade, there has been a trend in Bordeaux to mimic the Californians — viniculturally, anyway. Starting with the sound practice of lower yields, grapes were left on the vine as long as possible to create wines capable of higher fruit extract and ripeness. Of course the wine has higher alcohol, lower acidity, and achieves a high score with critics; but in the end, it doesn't taste like a Bordeaux wine. Rather, it has all the marks of a ripe cabernet sauvignon from anywhere else in the world — Napa perhaps?

In Italy, it has been rightly said that wine has changed more in the past two decades than in the previous 200 years. In Tuscany, there was a rush 20 years ago to plant the Bordeaux grapes of cabernet sauvignon and merlot side by side with the native Sangiovese. In the cellars, large, neutral-oak bottes were widely replaced with small French barrique barrels. These trends had their benefits, but as with some in California and Bordeaux, there were Italian producers that went too far. Along the way to fetching the critics' higher scores, their wines tended to lose their identity.

Over the past few years, thankfully, the pick-ripe-and-add-oak pendulum has swung back. Ripeness and oak are generally good for wine, but as with anything, too much is too much. Fortunately, many producers today are picking grapes ripe — but not overly ripe — and making wines that favor finesse over power; balanced acidity over higher alcohol; and varietal character over slatherings of oak flavor.

And thankfully, we have sauvignon blancs that taste like sauvignon blanc again, fermented in stainless steel rather than oak. We have a bundle of great cabernet producers in Napa picking earlier and taking their foot off the oak pedal. Producers in Tuscany are blending less and less cabernet sauvignon and merlot with their sangiovese and being more judicious with oak, producing wines with more energy and typicity. Pinot noir looks like Pinot noir again: transparent and red instead of dark and brooding, like a syrah. And to the benefit of all wine lovers, Jefferson could travel the world today and find diversity and choice in his glass once again.

Greg O'Byrne is executive director of the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta. Contact him at vinevents@aol.com.