(Wine-Searcher) - With all the focus on critics, consultants and sommeliers, Mike Steinberger says it's easy to lose sight of the real star of the wine world – the vineyard.

I’m stating the obvious here, but no country manufactures celebrities and fawns over them quite like the United States.

In fact, during the past decade, we’ve created a whole new category of celebrity: people who are famous simply for being famous, who have no demonstrable talent save for getting themselves on television and in the tabloids (whether the sex tapes that some of these people have made offer proof that they are not entirely talentless is a matter of personal taste, I suppose).

Although Sonoma and Napa are a long way from Hollywood, the celebrity mania has encroached on the American wine scene. Over the past 20 years, as America’s wine revolution took root and blossomed, American wine culture has made celebrities of critics, winemakers, consulting winemakers, and (lately) sommeliers. All this is just part of the natural exuberance of the newly converted. But as America’s wine culture matures, the time has come to finally, truly put the spotlight where it really belongs: on the vineyard.

In my last column, I called attention to arguably the most exciting aspect of America’s wine revolution – the fact that the U.S. has become a lifeline for a number of wine grapes and winemaking styles that might otherwise be headed for extinction, a role that it has come to play because Americans have proven to be such curious and ecumenical wine enthusiasts.

The enthusiasm with which Americans have taken to wine is gratifying, but it is hardly surprising that one manifestation of that zeal has been a tendency to glorify people who work in wine. The most obvious example, of course, is Robert Parker. Forget that he is arguably the most powerful critic in any realm that we’ve ever seen; has there ever been a critic in any field who has enjoyed as much fame or reverence as Parker? No, he doesn’t have Brad Pitt’s name recognition, but American wine culture made a celebrity of Parker nonetheless.

The harvest season usually begins 180 days after bud break in the vineyards, said Baily.

“There was no frost this year and everything began to bud out early,” Baily said. “It happened throughout California.”

The early harvest has come as no surprise, he added.