Ouch... As a "member" of the California wine industry I apologize for our awful wines However I also have to question your palate as California wines (huge generalization) tend to fall between the European and Australian wines you seem to love in character and flavor profile.

I've also noticed in my five or so trips to the LAX Qantas First lounge that at least half of the wines on offer at any given time are in fact from Australian producers, so maybe all the wines the "locals" thought were great were in fact the Australian offerings? That makes sense now right?