Wine
While wine can be made from many types of fruits and flowers, it is iconically produced from fermented grapes. Wine production dates back at least 8000 years, and today it is produced in quantity in more than 70 countries, with Italy, Spain, France, and the United States the largest producers of wine today. The world of wine is vast and complex, with more than 10,000 grape varietals in existence. This is largely due to experimental cross-breeding and grafting that has taken place for millennia, and such experiments have led to some of today’s most popular grape varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. The primary styles of wine today include red, white, and rose. While almost all grape juice itself is white, red wine is made by allowing the juice from black (aka red) grapes to ferment in contact with its skins, while white wine is usually (but not always) made from white grapes. Rose wine is made from black grapes with limited skin contact, which provides the pinkish color.
Top Wine Posts:
Understanding the Wines of France
Wine and Beer Touring in California’s Paso Robles, 2017
Touring and Wine Tasting in California’s Anderson Valley
Harvest in Chile’s Casablanca Valley – A Dusty Paradise
Chateau Montelena’s Dream Tasting: A Retrospective of Five Decades of Wine
Exploring Port Wine: Touring Porto and the Douro Valley
Visiting Tuscany’s Tenuta dell’Ornellaia
This wine’s pinot noir hails from Paso Robles and adjacent areas, and in rose form it’s lots of fun, filled with strawberry, cream, and orange flower water. The exuberantly fruity wine is on the sweet side, but it works well with its notes of coconut, lemon peel, and all those red berry elements. Gentle florals…
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This Paso Robles-grown cabernet sauvignon (made with an unusual blend of 78% cab, 7% petit verdot, 6% malbec, 6% petit sirah, and 3% syrah) comes across like many Ancient Peaks reds — heavy with beef and ruddy earth notes, its fruit locked up in slightly astringent, balsamic notes. Notes of spiced plum and licorice give…
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Hilmy Cellars can be found in Fredericksburg in the Texas High Plains, where just 115 cases of this petit verdot are made. Petit verdot can often be slightly off-putting, and while this wine is initially daunting and aggressive, it soon settles into a groove that lets its floral character shine. Tannins roll the wine from…
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I was surprised to discover that we haven’t done a formal review of Illumination in five long years. That’s a shame, because this wine, made by Napa’s Quintessa, remains a standout when it comes to sauvignon blanc (albeit one blended with sauvignon blanc musque and semillon, which is said to allow the wine to withstand…
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Now that Drinkhacker HQ has officially relocated to Austin, you can expect to start seeing more coverage of southern products here, courtesy of proximity if nothing else. Today we crack into a Texas Hill Country wine from Wedding Oak Winery in San Saba, Texas. This Aglianico — a traditional Italian grape — was limited to…
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Italy is a world of wine unto itself which produces a broad range of varietals and styles that don’t always make their way to the U.S. But there are efforts underway to expand the varietals that can be found on our shores, and today we’ll be reviewing five excellent Italian wines that may be new…
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Earlier this month, Robert took an in-depth look at three recent offerings from Banfi, an Italian producer offering a variety of wines at a wide range of price points and styles. For an encore, we’re pouring a glass of the 2017 Banfi Brunello. Bright and lively, the nose provides a perfect balance of earthy and…
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We visited with Scheid Family Wines’ Metz Road pinot noir, hailing from Monterey County, last year. Now we’re back with a look at the 2020 release. The 2020 release is just a tiny bit more engaging than last year’s flabbier offering, kicking off with some citrus notes that lead the way to a beefy, somewhat…
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Anderson Valley is the source for this wine, which we last visited with its 2017 vintage. Compared to the killer ’17, this 2019 chardonnay has a considerably harder edge, greener up front with a few notes of green bean and oregano, before a tart lemon peel element comes into clearer focus. Time in glass is…
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Bonterra Organic Vineyards in Sonoma, California has been producing wines from organic grapes since 1987, focused on regenerative farming and sustainability practices in wine production. (And for avoidance of doubt, technically Bonterra’s wines are not “organic wines” since there are sulfites added, but instead they are wines made conventionally but with organic grapes.) And as…
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