Grape of the Day

Does your wine glass matter? If you are savoring what you are drinking, it does. You can prove it to yourself by finding glasses of different shapes and sizes and sampling wine from the same bottle in each one of them. Be sure to carefully note the differences in flavors that emanate from the wine on your palate. Notice which hit first and which linger. Notice which glasses provide the most harmonious feeling and mood from the wine. Wow, that sounds like a crock, doesn't it? It's not. Let's consider why. The mammalian palate is essentially what we think of as the roof of our mouth. Since we taste in our mouths and smell with our noses, what will be really important to us in enjoying a liquid is to marry the taste and the smell. Well, that palate -- the roof of your mouth -- actually connects the nasal cavity, typically referred to as a nose, to the oral cavity, typically referred to as a mouth. So, in a wine glass (or whisky glass or beer glass or any other beverage contain...

Earlier this week, in one of my most viewed posts, I wrote about a sense of place . While it is a real sense, you get there with wine (or food or other drinks) by transporting yourself to that special little world. I'm going to go out on a limb by saying that people tend to like that wine that brings them to one of their favorite places whether that is the beach, the mountains, a quaint little town in your favorite country to visit, or even home sweet home. To truly get there, however, you need all five classic senses and sometimes even a sixth one (does the experience lift you up or bring you down), or at the very least, as many as you can get yourself to conjure up at the moment. And, I'm going to claim that the more of those senses you can happily bring to the fore, the more likely you are to enjoy that wine. Conversely, if the senses bring you unpleasant feelings, it could be a $1,000 bottle of wine, but you're not going to like it. Let's start with an experience th...

You're in Albuquerque, New Mexico and you're on your way to the artsy capital of Santa Fe and its shopping mecca of Canyon Road when you suddenly have a craving for Champagne. What do you do? Of course, you take a very slight detour and get yourself good old New Mexico sparkling wine made in the  Méthode Champenoise . No, we're not talking about a detour to France; we're simply getting off the interstate on to the "frontage" road and making a slight right turn for the finest value sparkling wine made in the Méthode Champenoise in the world, at least in my opinion. How do I know about this place? Well, we were driving from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, had a hankering, saw a sign, pulled off the interstate on to the frontage road and stopped to see what they had. Why would anyone find this quality wine in a place like this? Part of one of the families that has run one of the old world champagneries for more than 400 years emigrated to the American southwest. Settlin...

Over the last week or so, a number of people have asked me why I write this blog. To be honest, when I first started, it was somewhat coincident with the "shelter-in-place" orders (I started on Monday, March 23. I needed some sort of self-therapy and I enjoy writing, so to some extent, blogging was a natural outlet for me. There were other things missing in my life, though, just as lots of things have likely been missing in yours. In my case, I travel a lot on business. While I do occasionally get a business trip that allows me to extend in to a vacation to a place that I really want to visit, I have to tell you that there is nothing glamorous about flying to Minneapolis without the benefit of special clothing on a minus 20 degree day in February only to return home at midnight or to Phoenix in a business suit on a 120 degree day in August to have my red-eye flight home delayed for 9 hours by a dust storm. Regardless of anything else, however, each time I do travel, I go to a...

We haven't made a trip to Romania on this journey. Let's rectify that. We're headed to the  Târnave wine region just to the north of Sibiu in the part of Romania known as Transylvania. It's not an easy trip to get there. We flew to Bucharest, hopped a puddle jumper to Sibiu and drove to the north. We're up at about 1000 feet here, shielded from warming breezes by the Carpathian Mountains and the weather is quite cool. The area has an old wine history. Herodotus mentioned local wine in his writings more than 2500 years ago. Today, however, the wines have a distinct Mosel (the German wine region near the border with Luxembourg) character likely due to the migration of Saxons from Mosel to Transylvania in medieval times. So, expect the local wines including Fetească Regală to be white and high in acidity. Fetească Regală was the favorite grape of the Romanian Communist Party. Able to be grown with vines planted extremely close to each other and producing high yields th...

We've traveled today to the village of Wintzenheim in the Alsatian region of France. We're looking in amazement at the pinkish-grey grapes neatly perched on the hillsides overlooking the west bank of the Rhine River. It's quaint and scenic as is its sister town, Mohnesee, on the German side of the Rhine. The hillsides facing to the south and southeast get lots of sunshine and despite the quite northern locale, the microclimate here provides perfect growing weather for Pinot Gris. A vortex coming out of the Munster Valley to the south and southwest keeps the Wintzenheim area extremely dry. This allows for a much longer growing season than elsewhere at this latitude and allows for a particularly rich and full-bodied Pinot Gris. The trick is when to harvest the grapes. Alsatian Pinot Gris has the unusual characteristic of increasing its ability to produce alcohol by roughly 1 Brix per day around harvest time. Said differently, the alcohol content of the resulting wine can incr...

Just as it's a near-perfect area for growing Pinot Noir, Willammette Valley, Oregon is a wonderful place for growing Pinot Gris. Warmer than the traditional European growing areas for the Pinot grapes, it is shielded from much of the adverse weather by the towering Cascade Mountains, Mount Hood in particular. In many ways, this makes it much like Central Otago. The trip here was difficult. In fact, the trip almost anywhere from the South Island was difficult. Thankfully, the chartered jumbo jet business is slow during the pandemic, so our ability to fly some of the biggest birds in the sky was nearly unlimited. We arrived in nearby Portland well rested this morning and made the roughly one hour drive into Willammette Valley. Willammette Valley is an interesting wine region. It's long and narrow, running north to south. And, not surprisingly, the farther south you get in the valley, the warmer the days and the greater the influence of the pervasive evening and morning fogs and t...

We haven't been to New Zealand yet on this trip. Let's fix that today. We're heading to the southernmost widely recognized wine region in the world, Central Otago (of course, we've already taken a trip to Antarctica, but that is not recognized as a wine region).  New Zealand is split into two main islands generally known by the creative names of the North Island and the South Island. Central Otago lies toward the southern part of the South Island. The weather here can only be described as extreme. Winters here are colder and have more frost (nearly five months per year) than any other place in New Zealand. Summers here are among the warmest and the dryest in the country. And, at roughly 45 degrees south, summers get more sunlight than almost any other wine region in the world. The wine-growing area in Central Otago (by the way, there are not any directional Otagos to distinguish from Central) is quite hilly. Protected by the mountains on the South Island (among the ver...

Today, we're beginning several days of exploring another mutation of Pinot Noir. Known by different names depending on where we are in the world, this grape -- red with very greyish hues -- is known as Pinot Gris in most of the world, Grauburgunder in Germany and other Germanic countries, and Pinot Grigio in Italy.  We've ventured into the South Tyrol region more commonly known in the wine world as Alto Adige where we find ourselves at times fairly high in the Italian Alps. To our east, we find Cortina d'Ampezzo, home of the 1956 Winter Olympics while to our north, in Austria, we find Innsbruck, home of the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics. Grapes here typically grow at altitudes up to about 1200m/3900ft. That's serious altitude for grape growing and while the winters are cold, the summers with their bright sunshine are not. The history of wine here is quite prolific. Cato the Elder wrote of wine-production in the area in the 2nd Century BC. It remained one of the major wi...

Let's go to Komarno on the Slovak banks of the Danube, just across the border from Hungary. We had lots of choices today, but we chose Slovakia because we haven't been here on this journey. To get to Komarno, we flew into the capital city of Bratislava. From there we drove south into Hungary and traversed east alon the Danube for about an hour until crossing to the north from the Hungarian town of Komaron to the Slovak town of Komarno. Until the end of World War I, they were a single town. At the end of WWI, with Hungary, then part of Austria-Hungary, having been on the losing side, the country was split in many pieces including splitting along the Danube at Komaron. The area to the north became the newly formed country of Czechoslovakia, eventually split into Czech Republic, sometimes referred to as Czechia, and Slovakia. We are asl close to the Slovak-Hungarian border today as we can be. In the US, Komarno is largely known as the birthplace of comedy producer and writer Ivan ...

Campania is an administrative district in the southern part of Italy. Just to the northeast of Naples lies the province of Avellino and within Avellino, we find the town of Taurasi. In the wine world, Taurasi is probably best known for the eponymous Taurasi wine made of Aglianico , Barbera, and Piedirosso, but today we are here to drink white wine made from Fiano de Avellino often just referred to as Fiano. Taurasi, like much of Italy, has a long and somewhat confusing history. While closer to the Mediterranean Sea than to most of the rest of Europe, Taurasi was long occupied by the Lombards, a Germanic tribe from far to the north. From that occupation, we see the Germanic influences in the architecture including th. In the castle in the center of town. In the 11th century, however, the Normans conquered Taurasi and enlarged the castle adding their own influence to the castle that still stands. So, we see a peculiar combination of architecture in the castle -- Germanic toward the cente...

Let's go to Tahiti today. Why not? You didn't know they made wine on the island of Tahiti? Actually, the Tahitian wine industry cheats just a bit. Nobody has figured out how to grow wine grapes on the island of Tahiti. But, what they have done is grown them on nearby Rangiroa atoll and transported the grapes to Tahiti. It's only about 250 miles of open water. And, since there are only about 2500 people on Rangiroa and no tourists to speak of, it's far more commercially prudent to produce the wine on Tahiti. What is Tahiti? It's an island paradise in the middle of the Pacific, or so I am told. Wealthy tourists seeking secluded beaches in a climate with summer 12 months each year have long traveled there.  Rangiroa is not all that much different, but much smaller, and much less humid. This makes it suitable for growing grapes. The soil in Rangiroa is the product of limestone derived from the coral of which the island is formed. A particularly fast-draining soil, this ...

We're creating a controversy today. While this one of the white grapes of Friuli in Italy, the European Court of Justice ruled in 2007 that the grape could no longer carry the Tocai part of the name lest it be confused with Tokaji, the famous Hungarian dessert wine made largely from Furmint . So, in various parts of Europe, the grape is known as Friulano while in other areas, it is known as Sauvignon Vert. However, in much of the US, for example, grapes that are called Sauvignon Vert are really Muscadelle and that is not what we want to drink today, so we are sticking with the old name. So, European Court of Justice, we are going today to where we want to drink Tocai Friulano and that is what we are calling it. We're back in the Gorizia Hills , but on the Italian side in Friuli. The region has been war-torn in times both ancient and modern. In World War I, it was a major theater of operations particularly around Trieste and in World War II, the same areas were the subject of bo...

We haven't been to the Czech Republic on this journey. Today, we cure that oversight with a trip to the region of Moravia in the southeastern part of the Czech Republic. Today, we're drinking red wine from a grape known as St Laurent that is found mostly in east central Europe. Were we not in Moravia today, we might find ourselves in Austria. We know that the wine "industry" in Moravia dates back to at least the 9th century. There is strong evidence that wine was often excahnged by royalty to celebrate any of the many births in royal families. And in smaller skirmishes not violent enough to be categorized as wars, the losers often ended the battles by offering up wine to the winners. The production of wine grew steadily through the end of the 16th Century, but the Thirty Years War destroyed almost all of the planted vineyards. Regrown after that, they once again flourished until the late 19th century when the phylloxera came to Moravia. With the importation of phyllox...

Let's stay in Spain for at least one more day, but today we are headed to the northwest corner of the country perhaps 100 miles from the Bay of Biscay to the north and 150 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the east in a little demominacion de origen protigeda (DOP) called Bierzo. Much like Rioja  that we visited yesterday, Bierzo has both the mountainous part, where grapes are grown in the small valleys, known as Alto Bierzo and the flat plain known as Bajo Bierzo. We're here to taste wine from an interesting white grape called Godello. Bierzo is amont the older wine producing regions of the world. Pliny the Elder is said to have written about the wines of the area as early as about 60 AD. And, when the monasteries of the Middle Ages were built in northern Spain, Bierzo became a hub for Spanish white wine. This contrinued until the middle of the 19th century when phylloxera hit the Bierzo region. The phylloxera plague nearly wiped out the entire production and it wasn't unti...

We're heading just a little bit east today, but what a world of difference. If you were to ask a knowledgeable wine person where to get great Tempranillo and Tempranillo-based wines, many would tell you Ribera del Duero , but perhaps more would tell you Rioja. The history of wine in Rioja dates back at least as far as when the Phoenicians controlled large parts of Spain roughly 3000 years ago. However, regulations for wines of the denominacion de origen (DO) were not established until 1970. About 20 years later, Rioja became the first  denominacion de origen calificada  (DOC), the highest level of classification in the country, in Spain. The DOC is further split into three sub-regions although not all wines of Rioja are labeled with the sub-region. Rioja Alta, in the west, is at the highest elevation. This gives its grapes the shortest growing season resulting in brighter flavors. The wines there tend to be in the "Old World" style making them somewhat lighter on the pala...

Tempranillo has become a wildly popular grape. It's now the most planted red grape in Spain having overtaken Garnacha . Within Spain, while you can find it almost anywhere in the country that grapes are grown, it's become particularly noted for the red wines that it produces in two regions that we'll visit over the next two days. Today, we're in Ribera del Duero, an area predominantly in Castilla y Leon mostly to the northwest of Madrid. It's a sparsely populated, land-locked area with lots of natural waterways. Near the town of Burgos, we find some of the great wine estates of the area. At 850m/2800 ft, Burgos and its surrounding areas have cold winters with meaningful snowfall as temperatures vary significantly from day to day often hitting -10C/14F. Summers are warm and humid and see the pattern of rain often associated with tropical islands during the summer; that is, it's rare that we see significant summer rain, but there's a quick sprinkle almost ever...

Let's stay in Malta today for just a quick visit, but switch from red wine to white wine. Just as yesterday's  Ġellewża  was indigenous to and only found on the islands of Malta, such is the case with Girgentina. The grapes grown here in Malta are limited to those that thrive in the warm weather of the islands, but are able to withstand the strong breezes coming in off the Mediterranean. The basalt-laden volcanic soil gives the resultant wines a sharp minerality. To keep that minerality somewhat pure, the Girgentina never touches oak. This is a somewhat light wine and relatively low in alcohol. It's not meant to overwhelm you, but to complement your food, particularly the local seafood often served with pasta due to the proximity to Sicily.  In the glass, it's a light straw color with a bit of pale greenish hue. On the nose, it's subtle, reminding one of a gentle spring breeze. Imagine yourself walking through a field on a late spring day with not a care in the worl...

Let's go to another island today -- the main island of the EU nation of Malta. Situated just to the south of Sicily and due east of the African nation of Tunisia, it's an ancient nation dating back roughly 8,000 years. Often an independent nation, it's location in the Mediterranean has made it a much sought after naval base. At various times, it has been a protectorate of Greece,  Carthage, Arabia, Normandy, Aragon, France, Spain, and Great Britain. Today, its waem climate and beautiful beaches make it a tourist destination. But today, we come to drink wine made from the red grape Ġellewża (Google tells me it is pronounced roughly as zhe-hoozha. Don't ask; I can't answer. What I do know is that the Maltese language is a blend of Arabic and Sicilian Italian. Thankfully, English is a second official language, so while the locals can make themselves incomprehensible to us, they also communicate with us quite well. The islands that remain were once part of the land brid...

Let's go from one archipelago to another. In this case, were headed from the 8-island, Spanish-owned Canary Islands to the 9-island, Portuguese-owned Azores. While the Canaries sit barely to the west of the southern end of Morocco and the Azores eoughly 1000 miles to the west of the northern tip, you really can't get from one to the other via commercial means. When I Googled the flights, my fastest trip was a little more than 62 hours. So, of course, we chartered a plane for a direct flight. The wine industry, so to speak, has been in the Azores, for likely more than 500 years. Locals tell us that Henry the Navigator first brought wine grapes to the islands in the middle of the 15th Century, perhaps Castelao , initially. Today, there are 33 wine grapes authorized in the Azores. Arinto dos Açores, renamed from Terrantez da Terceira in 2012, is probably the most important both because it is only grown on these 9 islands and because it is grown more than any other grape in the Az...

If you are a typical person or even one who would consider herself particularly worldly, it's likely that you've neither been to the Canary Islands nor experienced the joys of wine made from Listan Negro. Today, we put an end to both those droughts, albeit vicariously. The Canaries are a Spanish archipelago, a fancy name for a group of islands, eight in this case, that is situated just off the west coast of the ssouthern part of Morocco. The best known of those islands and the one we are visiting today is usually known as Tenerife although its official name is much longer. That's where we are headed today. We expected our trip to be difficult. Getting from Budapest to Tenerife had to include several layovers. But, we got very lucky finding a Budapest-headquartered airline called (no, I am not making this up) Wizz Air. It has a direct flight and we got it. Tenerife is a beautiful island. Home to one of the tallest (from base in the ocean to summit) volcanoes in the world, it...

We haven't been to Hungary, home of some of the most interesting wines we've tasted as well as undoubtedly the worst spelling. (I admit that I copied and pasted to get the various 'markings' correct on today's grape. To learn about it and to sample wines made from this grape, we are headed to a place (and I refer to it as a place because it's not really a town or a village, but more of a hill and its surroundings in Doba) called Somlo. To get to Somlo, you fly to Budapest and drive about 2 1/2 hours mostly west through the dense forest of central Hungary. We're not far from Lake Balaton in the Transdanubian region of the country. The wine of Somlo has an interesting place in eastern European folklore. It was once said, particularly among the Hapsburgs, that consuming copious amounts of Somlo wine, probably Hárslevelű, led to conception of male children. What it really did may be another story. The hill that comprises most of Somlo is an ancient volcano. Long...

We're off to the island of Sicily today after yesterday's visit to Antarctica. It is a bit warmer here. Situated just off the southwestern toe of Italy's boot and closer to the African nation of Tunisia than to Italy's capital of Rome, Sicily is the largest island in the Meditarranean Sea. Legendary as the home of La Cosa Nostra , originally a group of private enforcers to the large landowners, when fascism spread through Italy in the 1920s and 1930s, there was a mass exodus from Sicily to the US. One thing that did not leave, however, was Nerello Mascallese, a red grape that is Sicily's answer to Pinot Noir. Much of the wine produced in Sicily is in the far eastern side of the island near Mt. Etna, the largest active volcanon of Europe towering more than 3300m/nearly 11000 feet over the island. The volcanic soil near the mountain has proven perfect for growing a little known red grape called Nerello Mascallese. Most Americans have never experienced it or at least d...

You've never heard of McMurdo Dry Valleys, have you? Getting here was our most difficult trip of the journey thus far. We flew into Sydney, Australia and hopped a flight southeast to Christchurch, New Zealand. From there, we boarded our custom, well-heated cruise ship and headed south ... and south ... and south. Just south of the Antarctic Circle, we passed by Scott Island to our east and continued south. Passing through the Ross Sea, we finally docked at the edge of McMurdo Dry Valleys on the continent of, you guessed it, Antarctica. This is not your traditional winemaking region, but if they make wine there, we're going to get there eventually and today is our day.  McMurdo Dry Valleys is a strange name for this place. In fact, while much of Antarctica is a desert, this area with the word "dry" in it is one of the wettest places on the continent. Perhaps you can research, but I have no idea where the name comes from. Almost everyone who lives in the area is a resea...

Let's take a trip to Azerbaijan today. One of the former Soviet republics, it's bordered by the Caspian Sea (the world's largest lake) to the east and is seemingly just a combination of a bit of shoreline, the rugged Caucusus Mountains and the valleys between the ranges of the Caucusus. Prominent among thpse valleys is the Kur-Araz Lowland and as we approach it, we find Shamakhi where the Cuacusus begin to decline. The drive from Baku to Shamakhi is difficult. The first 20 kilometers are easy, but after that, we simply look for mountain pass after mountain pass in our efforts to head mostly west. Vehicles driving this route don't last long. The roads are poor and the terrain is miserable, but there appears no other way to get here. And, the weather here is atrocious. Winters are cold and snowy and when it does warm up, the snow often hides itself as rain. On the other hand, summers are quite warm and nearly sandpaper dry. Not every grape can grow here, but the Azerbaija...

Today, we travel to the Franconia region of Germany, one with a battle-lorn history, but we're here to drink wine from a once mucb-maligned grape that is going through a resurgence. If you think back to the 70s, assuming you are old enough to be able, you may recall this sickeningly sweet, somewhat syrupy liquid that was put forth as Liebfraumilch. It was popular then, much like pastel-colored leisure suits and probably deserving of as much adoration. Sadly for the primary grape in it, the reputation of Silvaner suffered. We are here now though to understand the full potential of Silvaner as a serious wine grape. We're sitting at a picnic table along the River Main just outside of Wurtzburg. Not far from here, we can find the likes of the headquarters of BMW as well as Nuremberg, the site of the famous WWII war crimes trials.  But, way before then, the Thirty Years War had significant battles in the area. Wine historians believe that it was then that Silvaner was transported fr...

Today, we are in the Wurttenberg, roughly the area surrounding Stuttgart, Germany to drink wine. The grape of the day is Trollinger, sometimes known, particularly when it is grown in Italy as Schiava Grossa or Schiava Gentile..  This is not what you would normally think of as a grape growing region -- certainly not wine grapes. Summers are temperate and winters can be brutally cold often plummeting below -10C/14F. While the grapes grow throughout the Wurttenberg, in particular, we see them on the steep slopes of the Neckar Valley. But we don't usually think of the Stuttgart area for grapes. Instead, we think of cars. It's the home to Daimler Benz as well and Porsche both of whom turn often to Stuttgart-based companies Mahle and Bosch for parts. Rarely is such an industrialized area or such a cold area a home for grapes. And, in the scope of wine, these grapes are pretty unusual. The grossa version naturally is larger and the gentile smaller. As a result, the grossa makes a ful...

We're staying in Portugal today to drink wine made from the white grape, Fernao Pires, sometimes known for reasons beyond me as Maria Gomes. Despite that we are staying in the same country, it's a two-plus hour ride mostly up the coastline to a little peninsula just south of the capital city of Lisbon.  The town we;ve stopped in is called Setubal. It happens to be the sardine capital of the world. It's also the place where the most prodigious growths of Fernao Pires can be found. It's a scenic town that dates back to the days when the north African Arabs settled on the Iberian Peninsula. On the beautiful morning we have, we can see Lisbon and its sister fishing village Cascais to the north and Troia on a separate peninsule to the south. The weather here is warm and dry, but not brutally hot. The soil is very sandy clearly due to the alluvial fan on which we sit. Apparently, this perfect for Fernao Pires because it is not grown anywhere nearly as much as it is here. The ...

Today, we travel to the Portuguese Algarve. It's the part of the country in the far south known for its resorts and sandy beaches. The quality of life there is exceptionally high with the cost of living quite low, so it's a haven for retirees ... and for a red grape known as Castelao (a bastardization of the Portuguese word for parakeet) and occasionally as Perequita.  To get to the area, we flew to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal and the part of the country that annually has the highest number of tourists. The Algarve region, however, is close behind in numbers and actually has far more money spent by tourists. Probably the combination of the beaches, the low cost of living, and a significant number of outstanding golf courses outweighs the history of Lisbon.  We hopped on a puddle jumper to get from Lisbon to Faro, the administrative capital of Algarve, From there we drove a bit over an hour right along the shoreline to the small town of Tavira that borders the sea where the...

Today is one of those days when my real life travels are getting in the way of my vicarious wine travels, so here, we're going to visit a winery in Somewhereville.My real life travels indicate that in order to get there, you have to fly north to go south. For those of you old enough to remember, it feels like the directions from Fort Courage (the home of F Troop) to the Hekawi camp: take a left at the rock that looks like a bear and right at the bear that looks like a rock. What we're going to look at today is tasting experience. After all, the better your experience, the more you'll enjoy your day, and, isn't that the whole goal? When you go to winery, you are the customer and in addition to paying for the tasting, i.e., their services, you are a potential buyer of their wine. That's the way it works. So, while there are rules that need to be followed (they often vary by jurisdiction), you are the boss, or at least you should be. So, you, not the winery should cont...

Not loaded up with free time today, we decided to take a quick trip up to the Lake Erie region of Ohio to drink what has become one of the local wines, Catawba. It's a hybrid grape in a number of ways, but predominantly in that wine geneticists believe it to be a cross between vitis vinifera (most of the well-known wine grapes of the world) and vitis labrusca . Catawba was once the most planted grape in the US, probably mostly because it can grow in nearly any climate and its uses are fairly broad. In addition to being somewhat of a wine grape, it's also widely used in grape jelly and grape juice. Welch's, for example, is perhaps the largest user of Catawba grapes in the world. It's a particularly hardy vine and grape. Icy cold winters ... no problem. Hot, humid, rainy summers ... no problem. Largely because of that, Catawba is grown mostly in places where traditional wine grapes may not be grown or may not even be able to be grown. The wines produced from Catawba are g...