Grape of the Day

We're going jet-setting today and at the end of the day, we're going to go drink some wine to cap it off. But, if you recall, we ended our day yesterday in the northern part of Sardinia. Well, that makes it easy.  We drove west across the island to Alghero Airport where we hopped on a plane to Monte Carlo. Arriving at the airport and whisked away in the ultra high end sports cars preferred in the tiny nation of Monaco, we headed off for some early gambling. The Casino de Monte-Carlo does not open until much later in the day, but we've been fortunate enough to procure private entrance. Once we explained that we had so much important work to do later on the day, the locals were more than happy to escort us to our private table for chemin de fer.  After our successes in the casino, we headed west along the Riviera to the beaches of Nice and Cannes to see the "beautiful people." Increadibly, as we arrived in Cannes, the skies were overcast, but turned to bright sunshi...

Today, we are island hopping. That's right, we're going to not just one, but two Italian islands, Sardinia (Sardegna) and Corsica (Corse). Why? Were it not for a small isthmus between the two islands in the Mediterranean closer to Tunisia than to the mainland of Italy, they would be a single island. And, the Vermentino growing in Sardinia is so far to the north and in Corsica so far to the south that they are closer to each other than are the more distant parts of their own islands. The more renowned of the two, though, is definitely in the north Sardinian former province of Olbia-Tempio (in recent years, political struggles forced the province to cease to exist as a separate administrative body, but don't tell the locals). The landscape here is known for its mountains and steeply sloped cliffs. Unlike most northern Hemisphere plantings, however, rather than facing southerly to get the natural sunlight, most Vermentino is planting facing the sea getting the bright reflectin...

Often times, you see a bottle of wine that is labeled as a Reserve (or a foreign language variant thereof), Grand Reserve, Special Reserve, Vintner's Reserve, or some other type of reserve. Today's mission is to tell you, in some places, buyer beware. But, it depends. It really does. Let's use last night's wine dinner as an example. Two of the four wines presented to us were Rioja  from the same vineyard, albeit not the same vintage as each other. One was simply Rioja, the other Gran Reserva. Is it just labeling or does it mean something? In the case of Rioja, there are four levels of wine: Rioja, Crianza, Reserva, Gran Reserva. A wine that is simply labeled Rioja has typically had very little, if any, aging in oak. It's typically been aged a year or so before release. Up next is Crianza. To be a Crianza, a wine from Rioja must have been aged at least one year in oak and one year in bottle. Then, to be a Reserva, stepping up from Crianza, one year on oak is still su...

This is a question I get frequently. People ask me what my favorite wine is. I don't know how to answer that. I don't even know how to answer which wine that I have had was my favorite or which one I thought was best. It's so subjective. It's so mood-based. It's environment-based. It's food-based. Let's dig in a bit. I've been fortunate to have some very good wines in my life, perhaps not many by the standards of people in the entertainment industry be it film, television, music, or sports, but pretty good by my standards. But, whatever has been the wine that I had that I reacted most favorably to at the moment might not be right at all tonight. Here is an example. Out to dinner for a special occasion, I looked at the wine list and saw a 2003 Quilceda Creek (if it's unfamiliar to you, it's a high-end Washington state winery that has been summarily applauded by critics and 2003 was one of their best vintages ever). I glanced at the price, and unde...

Let's go to Greece today. Why not? We haven't been there for a while and even if we had, Greece is such a distinctive country geographically that having been to one area doesn't mean we are anywhere near the other parts. In particular today, we are headed to the Peloponnese, a strange looking peninsula in the south of the country connected to the main part of Greece by a land bridge known as the Isthmus of Corinth. We are hear today to drink Moschophilero. The history of the Peloponnesian Peninsula is quite old. It was well established in Greece when the first Olympic Games were held in Olympus on its western side in 776 BC. And, in the latter part of the 5th Century BC, the Pelopennesian War was fought between the city-states of Sparta on the peninsula and Athens on the mainland. And Pheidippides was said to have run from Athens to Sparta to report the Greek victory over the invading Persians announcing, "Nike, Nike, Nenekekiam," or "Victory, victory, rejoic...

If you've been a regular or semi-regular reader here, I hope you have gotten to the point where you are not drinking the same grapes from the same places anymore every time you drink wine.  In the last seven months, if I hope I've accomplished anything here, perhaps it is getting you out of that mode. Today, we take a trip to the part of Sonoma County from which a bottle we enjoyed last night emanated. We had no idea what to expect and I'm not going to go into how we came into possession of the bottle. I'll just say that for what we drank, the price was excellent. We're in an area today that used to just be part of the broader Sonoma Valley. Once referred to b locals as the Valley of the Moon, since 2013, this American Viticultural Association (AVA) has been known as Moon Mountain. We're to the west of the Mayacamas Mountainss on steep slopes where rhe planted grapes face almost exclusively southwesterly. At the highest elevation vineyards from which we have a w...

A friend referred me to an online article about a wine mixup. In brief, two parties were seated at restaurant tables near each other. The table of investment bankers ordered a $2,800 bottle of Mouton Rothschild while the young couple on date night ordered an $18 bottle of Pinot Noir. Each received the other's bottle. Since the article was posted on a social media site, the friend tagged me and asked me for my thoughts. Before getting into my thoughts and how you can avoid this problem, you need some additional background. The restaurant in question was a trendy, upscale French brasserie in SoHo in New York City. Apprently, both bottles were decanted away from the tables and the individual servers apparently mixed up the decanters. Can we call BS on this one? Well, that's hard to tell. But, let's try. In my experience, restaurants that have dozens of bottles on their wine lists with prices in excess of $1,000 per bottle have a waitstaff wtih a reasonable amount of wine knowl...

Flying into Lisbon, it's an easy 35 minute trip, mostly on the bridge over the Tagus to get the city of Setubal. It's in this unlikely city on the Estuario do Sado that the winemakers produce Moscatel de Setubal, another in the interesting group of dessert wines we have been featuring this week. 100 years ago, Setubal was a booming fishing village, perhaps the sardine capital of the world. Today, most of the fishing industry has moved outside of Setubal to other local villages like Cascais, but as fishing has left, toursim has come in. It's close to Lisbon without the bustle of a big city, but sits right on the water -- actually an inlet from the Atlantic where the sea is quite inviting. And, in that sea, tourists have some of the best dolphin watching anywhere. We love to watch dolphins, but we are really hear to drink wine.  It's a bit curious that Moscatel ever arrived in Setubal. Originally, the white grape of choice in Egypt, it founds its way to this little penins...

 Ooh, it got a 90. And, that one got a 93. What does that eman and should you care? Does that rating matter? After all, you see those ratings plastered all over the internet and even on bottles and in stores. But, what in the world do those ratings actually mean? Because it is more transparent, at least in the numbers (and I am not going to talk about cash flow here because that is all circumspect), let's consider The Wine Advocate (TWA) rating scale also known by its founder's name, Robert Parker. TWA tells you that a wine rated 95-100 is extraordinary. But, if you subscribe, you would know what the rating scale is made up of. 10 points go to ageworthiness, or at least perceived ageworthiness. So, I ask you this: does ageworthiness matter to you? If you are the person who goes to the store and buys a bottle of wine that you are going to open that evening (or sooner), just how much are you willing to pay for ageworthiness? Likely, if the wine is deemed extraordinarily ageworthy...

Have you ever been to the Aegean Island of Samos? Neither have I, so let's go there. Our trip to Samos is a bit tricky. Despite that the little isle is separated from the western coast of Turkey by only about 1 mile/1.6 km, the way to get here is through Athens. So, hopping on the blogplane, we are able to fly directly to Athens and from there take the long ferry ride across the Aegean to Samos. Once one of the smaller city-states of ancient Greece, Samos has a long and storied history. Going back to those ancient times, it was one of the major wine producing areas of the ancient world. It was also one of the major centers of mathematics in the ancient world as Pythagoras, yes he of the Pythagorean Theorem, obvious to some high schoolers and tantamount to a capital crime to others, was born and spent most of his life here. Aristarchus of Samos also spent his life here. Who was he? He was an ancient philosopher and astronomer who is believed to have been the first person to propose ...

Some parts of the southern Rhone likely feel cheated. While some appellations d'origine contrôlée (AOC) are well known all over the world and have been given trememdous flexibility to make wines largely as they would like, for many yeats, Rasteaus made nothing but Cotes du Rhone without even the name of the area attached. Today, we are in Rasteau, barely to the east of Cairanne and only 20 miles or so mostly north and slightly east of Chateauneeuf du Pape. The little village sits mostly on a small hill about 200 meters/660 feet above sea level. At its center, there is a medieval church with the ruins of a castle thought to have been built in the 11th or 12th century. All the houses in the village are in view of the church. Winemaking here dates to the early days of the Roman Empire. And, the grape of choice has always been Grenache. In early times, it was Grenache because in the southern Rhone, they grew Greanache. Since the end of WWII, however, Rasteau has been its own AOC. And, ...

After parking our private cruise ship (everyone should have a private cruise ship) in the port of Venice, Italy, we embarked on a trip to the north and slightly west into the province or Treviso. Crossing the Piave River just to the north of Cornuda, we arrived in the small town of Valdobbiadene. We're here today to drink wine that is 100% Glera. And, upon hearing that, your initial reaction is likely why do I care about Glera? Yet, Glera, much to the surprise of many, is one of the most popular wine grapes in the world today. First, though, where are we and why? Technically, while Valdobbiadene is really 15 little communities, at the same time, it's not really more than one from a wine standpoint. Some of these communities are nothing more than a wine producing family or two and ultimately, they are all in the same game. The drive here seemed easy until it was not. Initially, just a pleasant winding drive through southern Treviso with a gently rolling terrain and a landscape o...

It was in the mid-1970s when supposedly higher end wine from the US (primarily California) was starting to invade on European dominance (primarily France on a global scale) in the world of top wine. A British wine merchant and critic by the name of Steven Spurrier (no relation to the football coach that I am aware) decided it was once and for all time to put an end to all that malarkey. So, he organized what was officially known as The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 and later became more famous as the Judgment of Paris. For those who want to see a likely sensationalized account of it, you can look up the movie "Bottle Shock" on Netflix. In any event, Spurrier invited 6 California wineries as well as 4 of the top estates from Bordeaux to compete in the red wine category (California Cabernet and generally Cabernet-based wines from Bordeaux) and separately 6 California wineries to have their Chardonnay compete in the white category against some of the finest from Burgundy.  All of t...

I've heard from many people that Charles Shaw Wines, aka Two-Buck (or now Three-Buck) Chuck is a great value -- inexpensive and pretty good. And, then I heard from some of the same people that it's not so good anymore. What happened? Well, it turns out that Charles Shaw is what is known as a negociant. That's not a good thing or a bad thing; it's just a thing, so to speak. What it means is that it is a company that does not grow its own grapes. In fact, it might not even pick its own grapes. It might just buy the juice. So, Charles Shaw doesn't necessarily know what Charles Shaw is getting. So, if Charles Shaw labels a wine as Cabernet Sauvignon from California, it does meet all the rules. The grapes are from California and at least 75% of them are Cabernet. But, the rest is certainly unknown to you and me and it might even be unknown to the good people at Charles Shaw. If you are producing wine for $3 per bottle, and understanding that you do have a cost for the bo...

Let's head back to Chile today to drink wine made from Sauvignon Gris. Although normally just a blending grape in small proportions in Bordeaux, here it is much more frequenently used as a single varietal wine. What is it? It's a pink clonal mutation of Sauvignon Blanc, butbut far less aromatic than its more famous sibling. It is thought to have originated in Bordeaux, but when Chilean winemakers brought Sauvignon Blanc and Sauvignon Vert cuttings home with them from France, it's likely that they brought some Sauvignon Gris as well. Today, the number one place in the world to get wines made entirely or predominantly from this grape is the Colchagua Valley in Chile. Neatly situated where the Colchagua Estuary flows into the Bio Bio River at high elevations in the foothills of the Andes and just to the south of Santiago, the wines from this area can be quite interesting. Some consider it one of the most promising somewhat upstart regions in the world. While Sauvignon Gris is ...

It's another writer's block day (HINT: I need occasional topic suggestions and you can put them in comments or on any of the social media platforms where I push this material), so I decided to reminisce about where we've been on this journey. I started this blog on March 23 because I woke up and my weekly routine of getting on a plane to go somewhere every week had come to an end. I needed a therapy replacement and this was it. During that period, I've done 209 posts previous to this one, written about well over 100 unique wine grapes, taken you to more than 30 countries, and visited all 7 continents (yes, we did go to Antarctica). We've explored grapes that you know and grapes that you've likely never heard of until you read about them here. So, how do I write these? How much research do I do while I am writing? The simple answer, although perhaps just slightly misleading is none. I write off the top of my head. Where I "cheat" without specifically no...

In 2020, it's a name that is synonymous with excellent and very natural Sauvignon Blanc. But, what exactly is Sancerre and what is its wine history? Hoe long has Sauvignon Blanc been the grape for which Sancerre is known. To see what Sancerre is, let's go there.  Sancerre is simply a town on the left or west bank of the Loire River pretty much right in the middle of France. Roughly 200km/125 miles almost due south of Paris, it sits on a hilltop just off this navigable part of the Loire. Depending on where we are on the hill, we could be at anywhere from 200 to 400m/660 to 1320feet above sea level. And, while the center of what we know in the wine world is Sancerre, it's actually a group of roughly a dozen communes centered around this town. Sancerre was not always the home of Sauvignon Blanc. In fact, until the late-middle part of the 20th century, Sancerre produced mostly red wines. And when there were white wines produced, they were mostly Chasselas.   Somewhere around th...

The Sauvignon Blanc explosion in Napa Valley started slowly, but it probably started when Robert Mondavi opened his famed winery in the Oakville American Viticultural Area (AVA). In a bit of a play on words, he chose to call his wine made of 100% Sauvignon Blanc a Fume Blanc combining that the grape is white or blanc and Fume from the Loire's Pouilly-Fume. Fume translated from the French means smoky. In Napa, a fairly large percentage of the higher-end Sauvignon Blanc has as a component of it, the clone known as Sauvignon Musque that we discussed briefly yesterday in our trip to Sonoma. Not surprisingly, this clone has a somewhat musky aroma to it. And, due in large part to the quite warm weather in Oakville, Yountville, Oak Knoll, and Rutherford where an awful lot of the Sauvignon Blanc is grown, these grapes are to some extent the "anti-Marlborough" of the varietal. Where those New Zealand wines fully express their isobutylmethoxypyrazine putting off lots of notes of be...

Sitting neatly between state highways 101 and 116 in the heart of Sonoma, we find the center of Russian River Valley. Conveniently located minutes from Charles M Schulz Sonoma County Airport, it's an American Viticultural Area (AVA) known more for Pinot Noir and perhaps Chardonnay, but today we are here to taste Sauvignon Blanc. Why here? I like the Sauvignon Blanc produced here and that is a good enough reason for me.  What's so special about the Russian River Valley is its cooler climate wedged between lots of AVAs with much warmer ones. Sitting perhaps 10 miles from the Pacific Ocean at its border, the Valley is cooled by Pacific winds coming through the Petaluma Gap. This results in an almost daily morning fog before the afterrnoon heat. It's responsible for a much longer growing season as the grapes do not ripen as quickly as they do in other parts of Sonoma.  In the winter, the area is prone to heavy rains that often flood the Russian River. The overflow, of course, k...

You like the acidity and food-friendliness of Sauvignon Blanc, but you're overwhelmed by the pungency of the wines from New Zealand and you find the famed wines from the Loire Valley in France just a bit too acerbic? That's why today we are headed to the Casablanca Valley of Chile.  About 50 miles to the northwest of the capital city of Santiago, the heart of the valley lies to the west of the Andes. While it's closer to the equator than most regions where Sauvignon Blanc thrives, the proximity to the Pacific Ocean with its cooling breezes combined with the morning fog that seems to sit over the vines like clockwork provides an infliuence that allows for the production of a flavorful, yet tangy version of Sauvignon Blanc. Until fairly recently, the Casablanca Valley was not a wine region at all. Without a natural soutce of fresh water, it was thought too dry during the growing season to grown anything. But, in the mid-1980s, an enterprising Chilean who thought the climate p...

About 80 miles mostly to the east and slightly to the north of Cape Town, we find the Breede River Valley of South Africa. We're mostly at low elevation here, although in the eastern side of the valley, it does get up to more than 300 meters / 1000 feet. There are a few constants in the Breede River Valley: the summers are dry, the winters quite rainy, and the summers are hot. Even in the cooler parts of the valley daytime highs often exceed 30C/86F while the waemer parts to the west side of the river and sheltered by mountains on all sides frequentyly cross over 40C/104F. This is quite different from yesterday's visit. These very different conditions produce a very different type of Sauvignon Blanc. Frankly, people love them or hate them. To test this hypothesis, I chose one of the better known local Sauvignon Blancs and looked at all the reviews I could find. I found everything from "one of the finest Sauvignon Blancs you will find anywhere at this price point" to ...

When a serious, yet value-conscious white wine drinker thinks Sauvignon Blanc, they often go looking for wines from New Zealand. And, within New Zealand, while many don't realize it, they are typically drinking from Marlborough. So, let's go there to taste Sauvignon Blanc. Getting from yesterday's tasting on the outskirts of Chisinau, Moldova to the Marlborough District in the northeast corner of the south island of New Zealand is not going to be easy. Thankfully, as the airlines are taking the older planes out of the sky, we were fortunate enough to be able to charter a 747-8i for our long travel as commercially this trip would take seemingly forever. Even so, we needed to refuel once along the way. Landing in Auckland on the north island, we then grabbed a business jet to fly into little Renwick Airport on the south island.  Exiting our plane in mid-summer, the first thing we noticed was the weather. For this time of year, it was quite cool and dry, a bit breezy, and the ...

The Romanoff family, the last of the tsars of Russia, were wine lovers and collectors. In large part, they got their wine from what is now known as Moldova and collected much of it in the massive natural cellars underneath the largely limestone structures from which Chisinau, the capital city of Moldova was built. Today, we are actually headed to the village of Cricova, barely more than 10 miles to the north of the center of Chisinau. It's an interesting concept. While the town itself is above ground, what it is really known for is its underground. Then entire underground of Cricova, dug out to build Chisinau is a wine city. It has cellars, tasting rooms, and a "roadway" to get from place to place within the cellar that holds about 1.25 million bottles of mostly excellent wine. Today, we will do our tasting in this wine city. The grapes we are enjoying today were grown in Codru, within the city of Chisinau, but a bit to the southwest of the city center. The weather here i...

I've been holding this one back because we're going on another tour. Today, we start on Sauvignon Blanc. The mother, or perhaps the father, of Cabernet Sauvignon, this white grape is known for its food friendliness and racy acidity. Sauvignon Blanc is thought to have its indigenous home in the Loire Valley of France. And, within the Loire Valley, no place is known more for its Sauvignon Blanc than Sancerre. But, even within France, Sauvignon Blanc is not limited just to Loire. It's also one of the great white grapes, along with Semillon . When paired together in a botrytized version, they make probably the most sought after non-fortified dessert wines in the world. During this Sauvignon Blanc journey, we'll explore some of the chemistry that gives Sauvignon Blanc its name (the root of Sauvignon is the French word sauvage , meaning savage). This will help us to understand why this grape produces a food wine. We'll also see how differing climates and soil produce diff...

About an hour north of Detroit, Michigan, not far from the shores of either Lake Huron or the Canadian border, there is a surprising abundance of farmland. And when they plant, more than anything else, the locals plant grapes. There's not an ideal climate for growing the traditional grapes of vitis vinifera , but hybrids of vinifera and other grape species do quite well. One such grape was developed in Alsace (France) by a viticulturist named Kuhlmann. As is not infrequently done with grapes developed through breeding, Kuhlmann named the grape after himself. Somehow, though, this was judged by French authorities to not be acceptable, and the grape was renamed after the Supreme Allied Commander of World War I, Field Marshall (Marechal) Foch. It's a dark grape, extremely disease resistant and very comfortable with the sometimes frigid winters of Michigan. What makes it a bit difficult is its size. While ideal for the cold weather and making it less susceptible to molds, rots, and...

What do you grow where the summers are fairly warm, the winters pretty cool, and the growing season he rainiest part of an otherwise pretty wet and humid climate? To find out, we're going about an hour mostly south of Indianapolis, Indiana to Bloomington the home of Indiana University. While local wineries experiment with lots of grapes in this area, the grape of choice, at least when measured by amount planted is Traminette. How Traminette got to Bloomington is a bit of a Big 10 rivalry story. Looking for a grape that they could grow locally, scientists at the University of Illinois, crossed Gewurtzraminer , one of the classic vitis vinifera grapes, with a hybrid grape called Joannes Seyve (do not ever look for a post here on the merits of Joannes Seyve because you have already gotten my entire knowledge of the grape).  Originally bred as a grape to eat and hoping for something with a bit of spice, Traminette was shipped from Champaign, Illinois to Cornell University in Ithaca, Ne...

When do wineries and their winemakers pick grapes? Is it an easy decision? Do they plan, for example, in August to pick their grapes on, say, September 22? The fact is that this is a critically important decision. Winemakers will know what style of wine they would like to create. Timing is critical and they may not know until nearly the very last minute when they will pick. Some monitor brix, essentially a measure of the sugar content in a grape that can be measured with a refractometer. Some, as harvest is approaching, may taste grapes daily or more frequently. Almost all watch the weather carefully. They do not want a rain to ruin their grapes and to ruin their harvest.  Many decide to pick in the overnight or early morning so that the grapes are at their coolest when picked. Others looking for a different style of intensity choose to harvest late in the day. Picking the correct day or days on which to harvest is going to be one of the most important decision that a winery will m...

We're off to Liechtenstein today to drink wine. Neatly wedged between Switzerland and Austria, this tiny country is a fairly prodigious wine producer given its size. In particular, before rail travel truly opened up Europe in the mid-to-late 19th century, production per capita was rivaled only by France and Italy. Once the exporting producers were more easily able to move their wines into Liechtenstein, production dropped off some. Near the capital city of Vaduz, and frankly, the entire country is near the capital city of Vaduz, conditions are near ideal for producing cooler weather wines. A mountainous country, almost all of the plantable slopes in the country face south or southeast. This means that the grapes planted, typically between 650 and 850 meters/2100 and 2800 feet, get intense morning and midday sunlight that fades a bit during the late afternoon. Summers are dry and the chalky soils produce a natural minerality in the grapes. While nights are particularly cool, the day...

I don't know who decided this, but Gewurtzraminer is one of the world's 18 noble grapes. If the group of them, it is likely the least planted and perhaps the least appreciated. These days, Moscato is all the rage. It's often sweet and fruity, and according to one annoying email that I received recently, the perfect party wine. Well, Gewurtzraminer is the more adult version of Moscato. It has generally higher alcohol content, far more striking aromatics, and lower acidity. You can't guzzle it happily, and perhaps that is why it's not the perfect party wine. But, it is a remarkable food wine. It's a grape that grows best in cooler regions and its home is on both sides of the Rhein River where Alsace (northeast France) borders the Rheingau (northwest Germany). The growing season is typically somewhat short, but the harvest varies. When drier versions are the goal, harvest may be as early as late August or very early September. But, if sweetness is the goal, the har...

Why do you buy a particular bottle of wine? You've had it before? Your friend recommended it? It has a cool name? You love the label? It's a Moscato and you love Moscato? Those are all very common reasons that people do buy particular wines. But, there thousands and thousands of different wine SKUs out there. For some of those SKUs, there are millions of bottles sold every year. For many others, there are hundreds of thousands. That is a lot of choices for the consumer ... the buyer. I was prompted to write this piece because I was at a wine dinner. The food was excellent and the pairings were good. There were three wine professionals, or so they claimed, in attendance. One repped the wines in the US while the other two were with the Georgia-based distributor that has the local rights to the wines. They had a captive audience of nicely socially distanced diners who were enjoying an evening of food and wine. And, surely, they were there with the goal of selling their wines. Well...

Search the internet for wine faux pas. There are plenty of them. Many of them are made up, I'm afraid and some of them are so minor as to be ... well, so minor. But, I've seen a bunch of them and some are not minor; they are major. Let's explore. 1. Your wine might be better than mine . Going to a BYOB party, we brought a nice bottle of wine. You might even say it was a very nice bottle of wine. It was clear that this party was BYOB. It said so on the invitation. Most bottles had little markers on them so that a person could distinguish her bottle from yours. I uncorked our bottle and placed it in a back corner of the area that was being used as a bar.  A couple walked in who were not wine drinkers. One grabbed a glass, about a 16 ounce tumbler and proceeded to grab our bottle and fill his glass to the top. And guzzle it. And remark that it was pretty tasty. 2. I don't like sweet wine, but I like my wine sweet. Apparently to this wine drinker, sweet wine isn't very ...