If you’ve seen the movie Sideways, you know all about Pinot Noir. Right? As he says in the movie, Pinot Noir is a finicky grape, because it has very thin skins. It grows in tight bunches which historically made it susceptible to rot problems. Today this isn’t as big a problem because of improvements in [...]
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Viognier is a wine that is becoming more popular. It has the potential to be full-bodied like Chardonnay, but with much more aromatic fruit characteristics. The tricky thing about Viognier is that the grape has a tendency to attain very high sugar levels, which results in a wine very high in alcohol (During fermentation, sugar [...]
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The Pinot Gris grape’s traditional home is in Alsace, a region in France. But you’re beginning to see, everything that’s done in France is copied throughout the world. Pinot Gris pops up in Tasmania, New Zealand, and in the United Stated Pacific Northwest. The dry wines made from Pinot Gris usually have low acidity and [...]
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Syrah is a grape that traditionally comes from the Northern Rhône area of France. In most other parts of the world, it’s called Shiraz, which is the exact same grape. The Australians started calling their Syrah Shiraz, and their wines became so popular that the rest of the world for the most part has followed [...]
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Merlot is the other major black grape produced in Bordeaux. It is usually blended with Cabernet Sauvignon. Merlot on its own makes a wine with soft tannins. This is the reason why Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot complement each other well. There are two major styles of Merlot when it’s not blended. The first is mostly [...]
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Cabernet Sauvignon is the most prolific black grape used to make red wine. The traditional home of Cabernet is in the Médoc in Bordeaux. In that region it is usually blended with Merlot (and many other grapes), and that tradition has been copied in most places growing Cabernet around the world.
Cabernet Sauvignon grapes have [...]
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Sauvignon Blanc is another white grape which is grown in France (Bordeaux and the Loire Valley) and throughout the New World. It can make a very aromatic white wine, and is usually dry. In cooler climates, the wine often takes on what wine people call an herbaceous quality. There are lots of words used to [...]
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Riesling is another white grape that is planted all over the world. It’s traditional homeland is in Germany, and the Alsace region of France. It can come in many different styles, including dry, off-dry, sweet, and luscious (that’s what you call something when it’s the sweetest a wine could possibly get). In Germany they make [...]
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Chardonnay is one of the most widely grown and vinified wines in the world. This is because you can grow it in almost any climate where grapes can be grown. It’s named after a town in the Mâconnais in France. Chardonnay is a very neutral grape to begin with, it doesn’t have a lot of [...]
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The first thing I’m studying today is grape varieties. So what exactly is a grape variety? Well, first of all you should know that all of the wines we drink come from one particular species of grape, vitis vinifera. There are plenty of other species of grapes out there. Vitis labrusca, [...]
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