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
$10 wines, especially reds, don’t often get you very far. Sacred Stone is an interesting exception to the rule. If there was a year on the label (and a cork instead of a giveaway screwcap) and you took this to a party, your host would likely be impressed. Sacred Stone Master’s Red Blend (a vaguely…
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Sure, I’m familiar with Dubonnet. You see it on every bar shelf, without question. It’s almost always full and it’s sitting next to the equally dusty bottle of Punt e Mes and the half-empty bottle of Galliano. Old school, but obviously a requirement for the bar. Anything that’s been around this long deserves a spot…
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It’s grape juice for grown-ups: With its Wine Country Sodas, Vignette takes the juice of real wine grapes — Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc & Grenache — adds a little fizz, and puts it into single-serve bottles. But no alcohol, making them perfect for lunchtime, picnics, or those who can’t (or don’t want to)…
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Booze humor is big at Drinkhacker HQ, which is the only reason why a bottle of Palin Syrah was purchased today. Sarah Palin… Palin Syrah… get it? Well, some comedy is better if you’re drunk, I guess. Palin is an organically-grown wine from Limari Valley, Chile. As quaffs go, it’s dusty and tight, and tastes…
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By now the “Slow Food” movement (get it?) should need no introduction. But for the uninitiated, the idea is to eat local, sustainable, organic, and unprocessed food, as much as possible. They’re big on veggies, biodiversity, and all that other good stuff. Hey, I’m all for it. Lord knows I need no more high fructose…
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If you hang around the wine and spirits business for long, you get used to hyperbole. So of course I took the claims of the Family Winemakers of California event with a grain of salt, which swear that it’s “the largest tasting of California wines in the world.” That’s a bold statement for such a…
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Finally, the grandest of the grand sagas of my home wine experience. It’s now in the barrel, where it will sit for 5-6 months until we can drink it. Stay tuned! Read the epic story at Wired.com!
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Turns out it’s not just those sophisticated Frenchies that like wine: Overall wine consumption in the United States rose 3.2 percent in 2007 to 292.1 million 9-liter cases, according the Beverage Information Group’s recently released 2008 Wine Handbook. This marks the fourteenth consecutive year of case gains, indicating positive long-term health and sustainability for the…
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Pahlmeyer produces some impressive high-end wines. The juice that doesn’t go into them goes into this second label, “Jayson.” (You know it’s from Pahlmeyer by the distinctive cursive label and a tiny note on the back of the bottle.) Jayson Red also doesn’t indicate what’s in it, but it’s actually a Bordeaux blend of 73%…
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More of my experiences are now up on Wired about makin’ wine in the comfort of your own bathtub… the press and barrelling happens on Saturday, so expect the gory details of Episode V in the near future!
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