Grape of the Day

It is amazing. Of all the people I have ever seen drinking wine and there are certainly more than one or two, it's been extremely rare that I have heard any of them, other than my wife, say anything negative about them. Surely among all these people, I have observed them and been with them when they have been drinking severely tainted wine, but so many people just observe with their expectations. That is, if someone tells them it is good, then it must be good. What are some of these flaws and how do you know that your wine has them? Brettanomyces Often known as just Brett, brettanomyces is a yeast. Lots of wines, in fact the large majority of French wines have some level of Brett in them. In smaller quantities, many think that Brett adds a savory flavor to wines. Perhaps you've found a wine with lots of mushroom or truffle notes. It moght be a function of the terroir in which the grapes were grown. It might be Brett. When Brett is too plentiful, however, you should know it. And...

We often talk about a wine being high in acidity. Frequently, that's a good thing, but what is it? How do we know simply by tasting whether a wine is high in acidity or low in acidity or somewhere in between? What are these acids? Are they safe? Let's start out by figuring out what we mean. We could be talking about total acidity which some might refer to as titratable acidity. Or we could be talking about the strength of the acidity which is measured in pH (a scale of 0 to 14 where the stronger the acid, the lower the pH and water having a pH of 7). Which one is it that we are concerned with? Really, it's not quite either one.  What we are looking for is the freshness, the tartness or sourness of the wine. Is it crisp? Ot is it fatty, for example? Wines with high acidity can balance out the rough tannins that give us the sweetness and the bitterness in a wine. To understand, let's consider the lifecycle of a grape. One of the celebrated moments in wine country is verai...

Have you ever been to Castelli Romani, the group of Italian towns that find themselves in an ancient volcanic crater less than 20km/12miles southwest of Rome? If not, today is your day. Translated, the name of the area means Roman castles and it has that name not for castles so much, but for the collection of Roman villas found in the group of towns that makes of this small region. We find them mostly atop the Alban Hills and nestled around Lakes Nemi and Albano. Despite its proximity to the Roman capital, the hills of Castelli Romani are considerably cooler than the city of Rome. With the ancient volcanic soil and the rolling hillsides, it's a natural paradise for growing wine grapes. Among the grapes of choice here because, of course, it is allowed in the DOCG rules, is Cesanese, sometimes known as Cesanese del Piglio (Chay-suh-Nay-say Peel-yo). Grown near the town of Nemi, one of the leading strawberry producing towns in Europe, we would expect similarly bright fruit.  What we g...

Today's trip to the Lake Geneva area of Switzerland was difficult the day after Thanksgiving. Stuffed with turkey and everything else we consumed, I was surprised that GrapeOfTheDay Airlines let us fly. But, that they did and with that, we are in the Swiss Canton of Valais.  Geographically and climatically, Valais is perhaps the most diverse of all the cantons (there are 26 of them if memory serves me) of Switzerland. Home to the Matterhorn as well as the Rhone valley the river comes out of the mountains, it is the wettest canton in the country and at the same time the dryest. No, not the same places. But, both the wettest and dryest parts of Switzerland are in Valais. The name of the canton goes back to Roman times when looking at the river valley, the Romans called the area Vallis Poenina.  As happens to many words, the Latin word for valley was altered just a bit to Valais and that is the origin. While we think of Switzerland today as the place of peace in the world -- the ...

Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours! If you're reading this, there is a decent chance that you are going to be drinking wine with your Thanksgiving meal today. And, if that's the case, you need to open the wine properly. Failing to do so can cause accidents including ... no, don't say it ... wine spillage. For purposes of this post, I am going to assume that you are working with a waiter's corkscrew; that is, a double pull corkscrew that comes with a small blade and a hinged threaded screw. You've decided that you are going to start your guests (depending on who you are and where you live, those may be the people that live in the same home with you anyway) with some bubbly. Opening this is not difficult, but it's likely that you have not been doing this correctly. First off, the goal is to not make a large pop when the cork is extracted. Instead, you'd like to let the air out without that pop which might cause the Champagne to visit your floor. And...

Yesterday, I got a request to cover Pouilly Fuisse. So, let's do it.  Centered around the communities of Fuisse and Solutre-Pouilly in the Maconnais subregion of Bourgogne, the Appelation d'Origine Controllee (AOC) now known as Pouilly Fuisse was granted AOC status during the mid-1930s. It had a significant highlight just a few months ago when it was granted Premier Cru status in France (recall that in Burgundy, Premier Cru ranks just below Grand Cru). Being in Burgundy, and being a white wine producing AOC, the wines of Pouilly Fuisse are necessarily made of Chardonnay. Unlike those of Chablis, for example, these wines show a very strong oak influence giving them a much more full-bodied presence and much more spice and sometimes the vanilla often seen in California Chardonnays.  Likely because it's name sounds so distinguished, it's been a part of popular lore, particularly in the US. On Hogan's Heroes, back in the 60s, Corporal Lebeau recommended a 1941 Pouilly Fu...

We've got Bordeaux figured out, so now the rest of France will be easy. With our newfound knowledge, the rest of the country is going to be intuitive. Right? Bourgogne, or Burgundy as we English speakers call it, is up next. While we were in Bordeaux, we learned that the finest wines that the area has to offer were Premier Cru. And, in looking through our selection from Burgundy, we see a striking number of wines that are labeled Premier Cru. That seems surprising. Something must be rotten in the state of Bourgogne. And, to some extent, while not rotten, it is different.  In Burgundy, Premier Cru is the second highest classification of wines (you know, Premier is first, so make it number two as that makes oh so much sense). The highest classification is Grand Cru and that represents roughly the top 2% of all labels. So, here, Grand is first and first is second and second is third and so forth. You can remember that, can't you? Now fully confused, let's go to the wonderful w...

You read yesterday and you got it down. You learned the real keys to French wine labels and you headed to your favorite wine shop to purchase some French wine. And because what we went through yesterday was from Bordeaux, you decided to stick with Bordeaux. But, you were really in a white wine mood not a red wine, so your went looking for Bordeaux Blanc. Oops! Confusion set in. The labels were different. And, clearly, the grapes are different. Now, how do we know what's going on? Just as their are the five classic red grapes of Bordeaux, there are two classic white grapes, those being Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. But, some bottles are shall we say normals-sized (750 ml), but there are an awful lot that are half that size. And, some of these wines are more the lighter and paler colors while the ones in the smaller bottles tend to be bright yellow. Surely, the labels will help us out. Well, they don't. Again, they have the AOC or IGP designation or some just say Vin de Pays (a l...

If you're an American, French wine labels are likely a nuisance. They don't tell you the things you are used to knowing. Instead, they tell what French regulations require and for an American who doesn't know, they confuse us about to death. My suspicion is that this is a major reason that French wines don't sell as much as they might in the US. What are you used to seeing on a label? Likely, you look for the grapes or grapes, the name of the region it comes from, maybe the vintage, and perhaps a cool looking label. You also likely look for the name of the winery and the name of the wine particularly if it is has a cool name. What you don't look for are things like  Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) or  Indication Géographique Protégée (IGP) which is one level below AOC. (In case you are wondering, those are the wines that are allowed to carry the designation of a particular region such as Pauillac, Montrachet, or Brouilly as examples.) As Alice might have said,...

What we could call wineries in the US today date back to the first half of the 19th century. But, how old is the oldest continuously operating winery? The obvious answer would be that it dates to 1933, the end of Prohibition, or more precisely that it would be on my negative 24th birthday, the precise end of Prohibition. That would be wrong. On a limited basis, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution allowed for the production of alcoholic beverages for sale to others. Apparently, one of the exceptions to Prohibition were beverages that were classified as medicinal. And, a winery not far from the US Military Academy in West Point, NY that first opened in 1837 has continued to operate and produce wine ever since. One of the key products that carried Brotherhood Winery, originally founded as Blooming Grove Winery, in business through Prohibition was Medicinal Port. While it's not necessary to produce this product today, during Prohibition, other than so-called bathtub gin (this could ...

Okay, I admit it; this is a horrible topic. But, I have the writer's block of all writer's blocks today. So, today, you get football wine because Thanksgiving is coming and on Thanksgiving, we watch football. And, if you don't, then you do Thanksgiving differently than I do and this is my blog. I could go two directions on this: one is what you should drink while watching football and the other is the wines of former football players (and coaches who have gotten into the wine business. I guess I can save the one I don't use for another day. But, for now, imagine yourself sitting on the sofa or in your favorite chair just sceeaming at the TV. For me, that's not always easy to do in the traditional noon game because I often don't care about the Lions or whoever their opponent is, but the traditional mid-to-late afternoon game is different. The Cowboys play and that means my second favorite team is playing. No, the Cowboys are not my second favorite team, but whoev...

I'm sometimes amused, but honestly it doesn't help when it comes to gratuities. If I am at a family style restaurant or a little hidden away neighborhood favorite, my expectations are far less. But, when we go to a restaurant that is really pushing their wine list, I expect the service to be pretty darn right.  I'm not talking perfect. I'm not expecting that every server will handle a bottle and its service with the aplomb of a Master Sommelier, but if I'm looking at a list where as many bottles as not weigh in at more than $100 and many for those who want to spend that much are more than double that, I expect that the servers will have had some basic training in wine service. It's incumbent on the restaurant and its proprietors to do that and frankly, the dining experience of guests is better and they tend to tip more when there just aren't any faux pas. To digress for a moment, I remember a significant debate in Wine Spectator on tipping in a restaurant on...

Yesterday, in my final Thanksgiving post, at least until I decide to do another one, I wrote about Recioto della Valpolicalla. It's abig name, but not one most people are familiar with and several asked me about it. What in the world is Recioto della Valpolicella and should I like it? I'll answer the second question first. Yes, you should. You should like all well-made wines although you are certainly entitled to like some more than others. I do. Recioto della Valpolicella, henceforth referred to here as Recioto, is a sweet wine made in the same style as a dry wine, Amarone della Valpolicella. Highly ageworthy, and a cornucopia of rich flavors from raisin to date to fig to chocolate and many more in between, both wines follow very similar processes. But, one is so dry and one is so sweet. What is going on? Recioto, like Amarone must contain between 45 and 95% Corvina and or Corvinone, 5 to 30% Rondinella, and up to 25% of other approved grapes, but in total, the aromatics canno...

I don't know if it's a similar tradition anywhere else, but in the US, it is traditional to feast ... and feast ... and feast on Thanksgiving. And, to go with that feast, it's a tradition to finish it off with dessert. And with our desserts, many of us continue the gluttony by drinking. But, we must drink properly. And that is why you have come here. Here, instead of having one dessert and one wine, we are going to have seven desserts with seven different wines, although in some cases, we might decide to try out more than one wine with a dessert just for kicks. Why not? It's a blog. We can do whatever we want. For this year's Thanksgiving dessert list, here is the lineup and I feel certain you will be having one of each: Pumpkin pie Apple pie Cheesecake Chocolate cheesecake Sweet potato pie Pecan pie Pear and cranberry pie I know; you've never heard of having some of them for Thanksgiving. But, this is 2020. It's a year when you've not had the opportunit...

Suppose you want white wine with your Thanksgiving turkey, what do you drink? To me, that's an easy question. With the wide variety of foods often on the dinner table, you need a flexible, food friendly wine. You need something aromatic, rather than oaky and full-bodied. So, where do we go? Because we can find it in dry versions and in off-dry for those who just don't like dry wine, Gewurtzraminer  is the obvious choice. As we noted about a month and a half ago, experienced tasters can almost always identify a good Gewurtzraminer in a blinf tasting. Even before tasting it, the lychee on the nose is a giveaway.  Back to the turkey, however, we note that it has the white meat parts (breasts and wings) and the dark meat parts (legs and thighs). The textures are different; the flavors are different. This takes an adaptible wine. It takes a wine with an array of flavors to it that will go with either one. On the palate, we've noted previously that characteristic notes of Gewurtz...

You're going traditional; you're serving turkey on Thanksgiving. And, you're serving it with the somewhat traditional accompaniments including cranberry sauce. But, you don't like white wine or your guests don't like white wine or you're afraid it's going to be a cold day and you only like white wine on warm days, or it's 2020 and white wines are jinxed in 2020. In any event, that leaves you with red wine because you must have wine. That is a law. Yogi Berra would have said, "You could look it up." I think it's in the Bill of Rights somewhere. In fact, I'm certain of it. It's right between the 4th and 5th Amendments. So, you've committed to turkey and you've committed to red wine. Let's figure out together how to pair this. We know, because everybody does it, that cranberry goes with turkey. After all, it's a tradition; you could look it up.  In the scope of fruit, I think of cranberry as bright and acidic. If we thi...

So, you're hosting Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps it will be dinner for one, or for two, or for five, or for ten. Or, maybe you live in a state where it's not an issue or your home is big enough or maybe you've rented out a 10,000 square foot banquet hall and you are hosting 100 people. I'm not going to judge you for what you and your co-feasters think is safe. You might have reason to know. But, thinking about yesterday's menu , you're trying to decide on wine to serve. And, the rules here, in fact there should probably be a Constitutional amendment to require it unless you have a health or religious or-age-based objection is that there must be wine. Which wines should you serve? Let's foucs first on the red wine drinkers and let's focus on the meat. Your choices would appear to be either turkey-based or ham-based although there will always be some renegades who muck up the works with the likes of spam (is that a meat?) or haggis (is that a food?), but we...

Let's make this perfectly clear. You should have wine with your Thanksgiving dinner. There should be no objections to that. But, before figuring out what to drink, we'd need to understand what you are eating.  Today, because I am running late because my flight back from whichever country we were in where we learned about tannins was fogged in, we're going to focus on the basics. Tomorrow, if I remember that I said I would, we'll get more specific. What are you eating for Thanksgiving? The possibilities are endless, but there seem to be some commonalities.  Meats Turkey Ham Other less popular stuff like Turducken Vegetables  Squash Turnips Parsnips Sweet potatoes Other potatoes Green beans Carbs Stuffing Dressing Bread Sauces Gravy Cranberry Desserts Pumpkin pie Apple pie Pecan pie Sweet potato pie And football. Don't forget football. It's important that your wine pairing should reflect good hard-nosed football. Despite COVID, I am going to assume that you have a...

Unlike many other terms in the world of wine, calling something a dessert wine does not have particular rules attached to it, but many of the wines that we call dessert wines do. That's nice. We've written about some of them and might choose to write about others in the future, but that's not our issue today. Today, we are breaking dessert wines into a few classifications and learning a little bit about how they are made and what makes them different from each other. In a nutshell, wines classified as dessert wines tend to have an element of sweetness to them. They have residual sugar in sufficient levels that they will be sweeter than the dessert with which you are pairing them (a great way to ruin a dessert experience is to pair a wine almost as sweet as the dessert you are pairing it with as the wine should be sweeter). However, there are dry dessert wines, largely some Sherry and Madeira. All that said, a dessert wine is whatever you want it to be. If you want to serve ...

Some wine drinkers love them, others hate them. Tannins are the part of red wine (some white wines have some tannins, but they are very limited) that has no taste, but in extremes makes you pucker.  Some people love them. They are more sensory than anything else and those wine drinkers like the idea of the wine creating a sensation of structure and fullness in their mouths. Others hate them. The feel as if the tannins overwhelm everything else about the wine. Most are somewhere in between. Tannins are not particular to grapes, but it's when made a part of wine that they show themselves. They are found in the bark of many fruit trees, and in the case of grapes, they are found in the skins, seeds, and stems of the grape. We know that generally speaking, wines with more tannins tend to age better than wine with fewer rannins although there are any number of exceptions. Getting really geeky for a while, tannins get their name because they interact with proteins and precipitate them out...

Desperately in search of new (real) grape, we had planned a trip to the Piemonte today. But, the harvest was running late and we were told we would not be welcome for a few days. So, we decided to head to Australia to try a grape that is indigenous to that northwestern mountainous region of Italy. But, we're not going just anywhere in Australia, we are headed to the alpine region of the state of Vicroria. Our flight into Melbourne was uneventful. Coming in over Port Phillip Bay on which the state capital sits, the beautiful spring day made fro a great sight as the sun reflected off the water. We disembarked and got a car to head on our trip toward Mount Buffalo. Technically, we are in a small wine region known as Alpine Valleys, an Australian Geographical Indication only since the very late 20th century. Of all the Australian wine regions, this is probably the coolest and one of the newest. Once one of the leading tobacco-growing areas in the southern hemisphere, the Australian tob...

Today, we decided to stay in Nepal, but we headed north up into the Himalayas. We wanted to see what Pinot Nakkali would taste like at 14,000 feet instead of 4,000 and maybe up as high as 20,000 feet. In order to do this, we have found ourselves a Nepali sherpa -- a guide to take us high up into the mountains as not everyone experiements with alcohol at levels like this. One of the problems that we have found we are encountering as we start our trip is that our sherpa's command of the English language is quite poor. I don't know how we would have handled this in days gone by, but thankfully, even without ready wifi at our beck and call, we do have translation apps that we downloaded earlier on our trip. We're all set. I bet you're curious. Why, of all grapes, are we repeating Pinot Nakkali? Are you familiar with it? Most of the grapes of which we have done multiple days have been name-brand grapes, so to speak. Actually, I wrote about this grape on the advice of one of...

We're taking an unusual wine trip today. We're heading to Nepal to try out their fairly young and rapidly growing wine industry. While much of Nepal sits in the Himalayas, too high and too cold to grow grapes, the southern part of the country lies on the Indo-Gangetic Plain. And, in the far north of that plain, just in the southern foothills of the Himalayas is where we are headed today. To get there, we need to fly into Kathmandu. If you've never flown there, take a few minutes to find a video of the approach into Kathmandu and also into Paro, Bhutan. Then again, if you have a fear of flying, don't. As we travel to our winery today, we need to be particularly careful. We're up at around 1400 meters/4600 feet in an area that lies pretty much on a faultline. In many places, the steeply sloped roads have not recovered from the massive 2015 earthquake, so we've made certain to engage only the finest local driver. Leaving out of Kathmandu to the west and slightly to...

We haven't been to Bulgaria for a while. Let's head back there today. As loyal followers might recall, a mere 50 years ago, Bulgaria was the fourth leading producer of wine in the world. But, outside of what was then the Soviet Union, nobody knew about it. As one of the Soviet Bloc countries, Bulgaria was the producer of choice to Moscow and St Petersburg, then Leningrad. Today, Bulgaria is having a wine revolution of sorts.While a lot of production is of the traditional grapes, we can get them anywhere. But, only in Bulgaria, and a few bordering areas, can we get the interesting grape known as Mavrud. There are two main wine regions in Bulgaria -- the Danubian Valley in the north and the Thracian Valley in the south. Last time we were here, we were in the Danubian Valley, so let's go to the Thracian Valley today. The region is lined off roughly by the area controlled by the Thracians in ancient Roman times. Notably bordered by the Black Sea to the east and the Aegean Sea t...

Stuck in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea roughly halfway between the Greek mainland and the northern shores of Italy, we find the largest of the Greek islands, Crete. And on that island is the little known wine region of Daphnes. That's where we are going today to drink Liatiko. Why Liatiko? It's the only wine grape permitted under Greek wine regulations in Daphnes, the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) centered around the town of Dafnes. That's good enough for me. While other grapes are often found in the wines of the region, they don't carry the particular PDO labeling. Reminiscing about ancient history that we learned in grade school and then again and again and again, we recall that Crete is home to some of the oldest civilization known to man. In fact, humans are said to have inhabited the island for nearly 130,000 years and the Minoan civilization was there as much as 6,000 years ago. It's a mountainous island, created from volcanic residue in ancient ...

Somebody contacted me yesterday talking about branding their own wine. That is, they were going to work with a winery to make one or more wines, but with their own private label. What's involved in that? It's not the same as whisky, for example, where one one of the really big determinants is selection of barrel and level of toast and char in that barrel. There are far more factors especially when you get into blending grapes. What exactly are you going to use the wine for? Do you want it to go essentially straight from bottling to consumer to drinking? Or, do you have more grandiose aspirations for it? How about malolactic fermentation? Full? Partial? None? Is the oak new, used, or neutral? What sort of oak is it? So many questions, so few answers. To me, one of the most critical questions might be whether this is a single varietal wine or a blend. Blends sound cool. I mean, what sounds sexier: Merlot, or a blend of 9 different grapes one of which happens to be Merlot? But, wh...

We're headed back to Hungary today, specifically to the Eger wine region. Sitting roughly 80 miles mostly to the east and slightly north of Budapest, Eger is famous for Egri Bikaver (Bull's Blood), a red blend and Egri Csillag (Star of Eger), a white blend. Under Hungarian rules, at least 50% of each of those must be made of native grapes and in the Csillag in particular, at least 4 such grapes must be used. Zenit is one of them. Zenit is a young grape as it was bred sometme in the 1950s as a cross between Ezerjo and Bouvier. Seeking a grape that would harvest early to combat the early frost in this part of Hungary and one that would have nice acidity and strong aromas, Zenit was born. It took almost 25 years though for the Hungarian rulemakers to recognize Zenit as an approved native grape despite having been bred in the town of Eger. Likely this was due in large part to the changing governments as Hungary went through a number of changes after WWII. When Zenit was officially ...

Blasphemy? I'm going to suggest that maybe I and you stop buying one of my favorite wine types. And, I am going to tell you why. I really enjoy great California Cabernet, particularly those from parts of Napa. The most recentissue of Wine Spectator, and no, this is neither a plug for Wine Spectator nor allegiance to their ratings, but their idea of highly-rated wines  is usually not too far off of what typical drinkers of good wine think, featured California Cabernet, mostly the 2017 vintage. The 2017 vintage was a great vintage in California. A very warm and dry growing season allowed for long hang times which, in turn, gave us what I am sure will be some absolutely prodigious wines.  But, let's take a walk back in history. I first visited Napa in the 2005-2006 timeframe. Since then, inflation has been a whopping cumulative 25% give or take a very small amount. That's not much. I think back to some of the excellent Cabernet that I acquired back then. There were lots of 90+...

Cognac is a form of brandy. But, we're covering it today because it is made from wine grapes. So, let's dive in. It's a region, barely to the north of Bordeaux that is known as an  Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP). In France, that means it has rules and regulations and more rules and regulations. As is the case in essentially every wine region in France, the grapes that may be used are limited. In Cognac AOP, the three grapes that may be used are Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche, and Colombard. Others include just a splash of lesser known grapes and some use a bit of Semillon. Many Cognacs use exclusively Ugni Blanc. Now we get to why we can cover this in a wine blog. Before Cognac becomes Cognac, it is wine. That's right, the Ugni Blanc and other grapes are fermented into a highly acidic, low alcohol, quite tart wine. From there, the wines undergo malolactic fermentation converting the overly acrid malic acid to softer, creamier lactic acid. Yesterday began the process of...

There is a common characterization of wines -- old world or new world. What does that mean and should you care? Today, we'll try to answer that question. The terminology comes, I think, from the newfound (over the last 50 years or so) popularity of other than European wines. Two of the really predominant areas that those wines come from are the western US and the southern part of Australia.  What do those two areas have in common that most of Europe does not? Their summers can be hot -- brutally hot. I've been in California wine country for daytime highs around 110F/43C. While those days are unusual, they are not so rare as to think they are freaky. In most of Europe, especially the areas where grapes are grown, days like that are more like once in a decade or maybe even once in a century. Climate changes the grapes. Heat, in particular, tends to produce a grape that, in turn, produces a bigger, bolder wine. They are more fruit forward and less earthy and spicy, generally speak...