Wine
While wine can be made from many types of fruits and flowers, it is iconically produced from fermented grapes. Wine production dates back at least 8000 years, and today it is produced in quantity in more than 70 countries, with Italy, Spain, France, and the United States the largest producers of wine today. The world of wine is vast and complex, with more than 10,000 grape varietals in existence. This is largely due to experimental cross-breeding and grafting that has taken place for millennia, and such experiments have led to some of today’s most popular grape varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. The primary styles of wine today include red, white, and rose. While almost all grape juice itself is white, red wine is made by allowing the juice from black (aka red) grapes to ferment in contact with its skins, while white wine is usually (but not always) made from white grapes. Rose wine is made from black grapes with limited skin contact, which provides the pinkish color.
Top Wine Posts:
Understanding the Wines of France
Wine and Beer Touring in California’s Paso Robles, 2017
Touring and Wine Tasting in California’s Anderson Valley
Harvest in Chile’s Casablanca Valley – A Dusty Paradise
Chateau Montelena’s Dream Tasting: A Retrospective of Five Decades of Wine
Exploring Port Wine: Touring Porto and the Douro Valley
Visiting Tuscany’s Tenuta dell’Ornellaia
France’s Loire Valley, just 100 miles or so southwest of Paris, has long been a kind of working man’s alternative to the fancier wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy. But here in the third largest winegrowing region in the country, you’ll find some of France’s most approachable wines, including the universally loved Sancerre (made from sauvignon…
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Krug’s 2017 cab is surprisingly lean and already hitting maturity. The wine (a blend of 87% cabernet sauvignon, 5% merlot, 5% petit verdot, and 3% petite sirah) is dry and very herbal, with a slight oxidized note and lots of green pepper/green onion sitting heavy atop the otherwise straightforward core of currants. Quite tannic as…
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Lodi’s Oak Farm Vineyards produces a surprisingly wide range of wines, including many made with classically European varietals, one of which we cover in this two-fer review. 2018 Oak Farm Albarino Lodi – This is a surprising wine from Lodi, full of tropical fruit, Cape gooseberry, and lemon peel notes. Bursting with fruit and sweetness,…
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Chalk Hill’s (gray-label) Estate Chardonnay is one of its most classic bottlings. Bold with buttery oak, it folds in notes of fig, lemon peel, and pears, and as with other bottlings of this wine — grapes from the eponymous AVA — a slight layer of coconut peeks through. The finish hints at a mild nuttiness…
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This rose is born of mystery grapes — “mostly syrah,” per the winery — but it comes across much like any Central Coast rose wine, full of strawberries and cream, a light layer of spice, and a vanilla custard note on the back end. Citrus and floral notes all dance on the tongue here and…
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Jeff Runquist’s name may make him sound like a race car driver, but he’s actually a veteran winemaker who makes his home in California’s Amador County. We recently received a five-pack of wines from the Runquist stable — which comprises 25 red varietals alone — to see what he’s been up to. Thoughts follow. 2018…
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This pinot noir hails from always-on-the-wine-list-by-the-glass La Crema, though you don’t often see the winery’s Sonoma Coast appellation, a slightly elevated bottling. This 2017 acquits itself fine, offering an appropriately cool climate construction that offers notes of brambly blackberry, blueberry reduction, and cola. The finish has grip, its tannic bite suggesting hints of clove and…
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Tasca d’Almerita’s wines show up here on Drinkhacker fairly regularly, the Sicilian operation dropping a wide range of styles beyond the expected nero d’avola (though they make that, as well). Dating back to 1830 Tasca’s Tenuta Regaleali winery is one of its biggest and most noteworthy, and today we look at four wines from this…
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Up next we have a pair of deep reds from Dominio Fournier in Spain’s Ribera del Duero region. Located in Burgos, the Fournier winery was built in 1979 and is made up of 80 hectares, 50 of which are vineyards with an average age of between 30 and 70 years old. The wines, made from…
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Here’s a duo of summertime wines from Seven Hills, which can be found in Washington’s Walla Walla Valley. 2019 Seven Hills Sauvignon Blanc Columbia Valley – Straightforward and pale as a ghost, this Washington sauvignon blanc is innocuous and inoffensive, an exploration of grassy, lightly spicy apples and lemon curd, with a tinge of sauvi-centric…
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