January 2010
Caroprese33 - Gantt made a good effort. I'll see if I can help.
1. See Gantt's answer except that there is no reason at all the comment regarding the old world would not apply to the new world. Soil doesn't change in either hemisphere. Otherwise, key factor is weather.
2a. Key... Read moreCaroprese33 - Gantt made a good effort. I'll see if I can help.
1. See Gantt's answer except that there is no reason at all the comment regarding the old world would not apply to the new world. Soil doesn't change in either hemisphere. Otherwise, key factor is weather.
2a. Key varietals - are actually "varieties". People use the word wrong all the time but "varietal" is an adjective, not a noun. You have varieties of grapes, or grape varieties. (I'm not picking on you. It's commonly used incorrectly, but you said you wanted to be an educated wine drinker.)
Other than that, the answer is that there are no "key" varieties in a general sense, so you have to define what you mean by that term. If you go by the acreage planted worldwide, probably the most important red is garnacha, also known as grenache. The most widely planted white is arien.
If you go by popularity in California, the most widely planted red grape until recently was something like colombard. There was a lot of carignan planted too. Then when wine became chic for Americans in the 1970s, zinfandel led the way in red grapes until sometime in the late 1990s.
If you look at what people drink, you have a different definition of "key". For example, I drink hardly any pinot noir ever, so that's not key for me. However, I drink a lot of tempranillo, so that's key.
If you drink a lot of Italian wine, or Spanish wine, or wine from the Rhone Valley in France, you're not going to come across a lot of merlot. You may find some, but it's much more important or key in places like Bordeaux, much of California and Washington, Chile, and Hungary and a few other places. There is a large French influence on the wine industry in CA, so the varieties Gantt listed are grown there, but if the industry were starting today, I'm willing to bet there'd be a lot more Italian grapes grown. But because of the French influence in the US, people know the French grapes. In Australia, garnacha was the most widely planted red grape until they ripped so much up. That's of course Spanish, and they replaced it with syrah, which is French.
And that answers the second part - where they come from. Mostly where grapes are grown in Europe is a result of accident and politics. In South America, that's less the case. Grapes were brought by conquerors who brought what they knew, but more recently they were planted by businessmen who will plant whatever they think they can sell. In the US, Australia, South Africa, it's a matter of initially trying to copy certain regions in Europe and now more of an effort to find what will grow where and sell best. So there is a lot more flux in where things go because there aren't as many laws to restrict what you can do.
2. What goes into the wine at fermentation, is generally yeast. In places like Burgundy, sugar. After fermentation there are different things that may go in. Maybe acid. Maybe water. Oxygen. If it is fined with egg whites or bentonite, then those things. Some people add powder to make the wine darker. Some add flavorings. Some add powdered tannin. Sulfites occur naturally. Some people add additional sulfur to prevent oxidation. There's also stuff from the air - bacteria for example.
3 - How many grapes for a barrel - depends on the grapes and the grower and the vintage.
Check this out: http://www.napanow.com/wine.statistics.html
Wine from a single variety is a monovarietal wine
4. A blend successful - Gantt is spot on. The purpose of a blend isnt' just for its own sake. It's to make a better wine. If your garnacha isn't tannic enough, maybe you add some monastrell or cab or something.
5. Gantt is spot on again. The rule came from the idea that you don't want to overpower one or the other. Trout with a woody cabernet sauvignon? Maybe not. But if it's what you like, then go for it. I do.
6. Economics - what goes into the price is whatever goes into any price. Part of it is cost. Part is handling. Part is marketing. A wine that costs less than $20 to produce, like most Bordeaux, may go for hundreds of dollars. The wineries price them like that because they know you'll buy them. Another wine that costs $20 may go for $20 because people can't sell it. As a general rule, figure in the US an imported wine is on the retail shelf at three to four times what it cost at the cellar, depending on how many people had to handle it.
Look at the chart I linked to. Figure how many bottles you get from a barrel. A barrel costs nearly $1000 these days if it's French oak from an excellent cooper. You don't put cheap grapes in that. In CA you may pay $4000 - $5000 a ton for top cab. Elsewhere you can get it for much less. Winemakers have absolutely no way to judge demand before making the wine, but they can judge demand before a bottle is released by the demand from their distributors, importers, and press. if they had great press and people pounding on their doors, they may raise their bottle price. This is not the case for most wine producers however, and they make the product based on hope.
7. Key terms for taste are whatever you use to describe any taste. Wine is no different. Drink a cup of coffee. How do you describe it other than to say "coffee"? Same thing. Also keep in mind that 90 pct of what people write about their flavor discoveries is pretty much nonsense. If you drink a lot of wine, you eventually meet people who claim to taste a million different things in the glass you're having. But can they identify that wine a week later, even after all those detailed descriptions that seemed so precise? Most of the time the answer is no.
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