Well, I don't see it as a point to agree OR disagree with. TA is mightily important when working with warm weather grapes. The balance of TA and PH produce a much better tasting wine. Your example of the initial numbers of your Calif grapes is proof of what you are saying. Warm weather grapes demand a whole different skill set than cold weather grapes do. The two are not the same, by any means.
The thing I disagreed with is that "you ALWAYS have to take TA into account." The wines that we make are proof that TA is not that important of an issue FOR US. All the new wine makers in our wine club are working with TA because that is the way they were taught. Many of their wines have problems because they are working high acid fruits and grapes and the TA reading is only ballpark for their estimation of PH.
We USED to work with TA many years ago. We ended up tossing the TA test kit and going with PH control--such a difference in our wines!! We often have people say to us,"why doesn't ALL wine taste like your's?" Or,"where can I buy this wine?" We didn't get those comments until we started eliminating water additions to our wines, and then being very strict with PH control. And I think that's the big thing for us--we use NO WATER. So that demands PH control.
We make cherry,serviceberry, plum,red raspberry,black raspberry, blackberry,pear,apple,strawberry,elderberry,paw paw fruit wines. Grape wines are concord, Niagara,catawba. We also make some Calif wines from concentrate for blending purposes,also. We also live in an area with high acid soil---so a PH meter is a small price to pay in order to make good wines from high acid fruits. We grow a lot of our fruit or it's growing wild in the fence rows. We have a very small vineyard of concord. We pick the bulk of our concord and all of the Niagara in vineyards in our area. We also hit the Amish fruit auctions for strawberries because we get better fruit from the Amish than any of the local fruit farms.