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Facts About Wine
By Gus Clemens
Columbard
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Baby Boomer? You probably got your white wine initiation with French Colombard.
Colombard was most-planted white wine grape in California until 1991. Left Coast vintners claimed they valued colombard for its aromatics and ability to retain acidity in the face of Central Valley’s hot climate. Flavor notes usually include apples, pears, and crispness.
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What’s in a name for Syrah, Shiraz
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Wine black humor: “What is difference between a case of Syrah and a case of pneumonia? You can get rid of a case of pneumonia.”
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Sémillon: delicious wine for the ages
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Sémillon is grape that stars in improbable marriages: with Sauvignon Blanc in classic blends made in France and Australia; with fungus Botrytis cinerea in Sauternes region of Bordeaux to create world’s longest-lived unfortified wines.
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Cab Franc splendid as blender and leader
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Cabernet Franc is an important grape variety for a variety of reasons: its progeny, its role as a ubiquitous blending grape, as insurance, and—finally—as a splendid lead grape in its own right.
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Pinot Gris, Grigio—versatile, delicious
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Pinot Gris–Pinot Grigio. Same grape, often not same wine.
The grape is a Pinot Noir mutation—clusters retain pine-cone shape (pinot), but instead of black (noir) they are gray (gris), more accurately grayish blue or brownish pink, even in the same cluster.
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Toast end of summer with right white wine
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Labor Day weekend cometh. Even if autumnal equinox is more than two weeks away, the weekend is easy excuse for a last garden gathering or final shorts-and-flip-flops party before kids trek back to school and hazy-lazy-crazy days fade to memories.
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Barbera can be wonderful, and it can be terrible, too
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Barbera is a grape similar to Longfellow’s girl with the curl. When it is good, it is very good indeed. And when it is bad, it is horrid.
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Bordeaux or Burgundy? Enjoy classic taste question
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Great debates of Western Civilization: boxers or briefs, Ginger or Mary Ann, Rolling Stones or Beetles? Among oenophiles: Bordeaux or Burgundy?
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Bravo l’Italia! Nebbiolo fog engenders epic wines
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Nebbiolo is Italy’s great black grape, source of some of the longest-lived Italian wines—Barolo and Barbaresco—and many people do not have the foggiest idea about the grape, what kind of wine the grape makes, or even where it is from.
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Mourvèdre
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Mourvèdre may be the most famous grape you don’t know about and certainly is among more intimidating to pronounce: Moor VAY druh.
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