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
Laura Catena is busy enough racking up award after award for her family’s flagship Catena lines that one would think between co-authoring one of the best books on Malbec, running the day-to-day operations of the family business, running a medical clinic, and releasing new high-altitude variations on malbec that she would have enough on her…
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Portugal’s Douro is know for being the home of Port wines, but a number of still wines are also produced here, including this bottling, made on the estates of Port producer Quinta do Vesuvio. It’s blended from four Portuguese grapes: Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, and Tinta Barroca. Rich with currants and plums, almost…
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This wallet-friendly extension of Paso Robles-based San Antonio wines is named after its founder, Maddalena Riboli. Now in her mid-nineties, she remains actively involved as an advisor to day-to-day operations with no signs of slowing down. Here’s a look at two of the more recent bottlings in the company’s extensive portfolio of offerings: 2020 Maddalena…
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While Central Valley’s Lodi region may not carry the brand-name luxury clout of other parts of California, it has more than a generous number of winemakers releasing affordable, approachable wines of quality at a healthy pace. Peirano is a fourth-generation family enterprise from the area, and we gave two of their most recent red releases…
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Two new estate wines from Oregon’s Sokol Blosser, based in the Dundee Hills: 2020 Sokol Blosser Estate Chardonnay Dundee Hills – Surprisingly tart, almost green at times, with more than a little saline character — none of which immediately evokes charddonay. After some of the lime leaf and salt-heavy elements settle down, the wine showcases…
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We previously reviewed Graham Beck Brut sparkling wine, and today we are sampling their Brut Rosé. Both are made in the Méthode Cap Classique, which is the South African terminology for the traditional Champagne method of having secondary fermentation occur in the bottle. Both also use the same grapes, but in different proportion. For the…
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We had the good fortune to review a selection of offerings from Flat Top Hills around this time last year. And we continue that good fortune into 2022 with the opportunity to review winemaker Randy Herron’s 2021 Pinot Noir. We’re a bit delayed due to an unfortunate bout of Covid that robbed me of the ability…
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There’s a high probability that Karen MacNeil has forgotten more about wine than most of us will ever know. Over 700 pages in length, this 3rd edition has made many significant upgrades over the first two printings: color coding, 400 new photos, sharper infographics, new sections on Great Britain, Israel, and Croatia, as well as…
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2009 is the current vintage of this luxe Chianti Classico from Italian giant Ruffino, which is made only during “outstanding” vintages largely from estate fruit — although 2009 was not considered a stellar year for Tuscany. Either way, this was clearly bottled and released at just the right point. Pretty notes of cherry and spiced…
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We’re back with a fresh look at Bryn Mawr’s Willamette Valley-based pinot noir, grown on the winery’s estate in the Eola-Amity Hills region. It’s something of a bruiser for the brand, a bit bigger than the 2018 release we reviewed in January in every way. Weighty notes of turned earth and some oxidized fruit give…
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