{"id":411,"date":"2016-11-29T17:13:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T17:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=411"},"modified":"2016-11-29T17:13:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T17:13:43","slug":"grapes-youve-never-tasted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=411","title":{"rendered":"Grapes You\u2019ve Never Tasted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s face it: in terms of the grapes we drink these days, we\u2019ve all become pretty boring and pretty French.\u00a0 The majority of what we drink and the majority of what we sip when we go wine tasting are derived from four regions of France.\u00a0 There are the Bordeaux grapes, in particular Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.\u00a0 Burgundy provides us Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; the Rhone Valley chips in Syrah and Grenache and the Loire Valley adds Sauvignon Blanc.\u00a0 Go wine tasting virtually anywhere in America or Australia and that\u2019s what the wineries will pour for you.<\/p>\n

Oh, yes, it\u2019s quite different in Italy where you\u2019ll get their grapes, in particular Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, and Nero d\u2019Avola in the reds.\u00a0 There are hundreds of local varietals that rarely find their way into export crates.\u00a0 Spain, too, has its own specialties, Tempranillo being the best known.\u00a0 But sometimes in your travels, both in Europe and North America you\u2019ll come across a varietal you\u2019ve never tasted.\u00a0 Hell, you\u2019ve never even heard<\/em> of it. How do you know if you like it?\u00a0 How do you know if the wine made from those grapes is well made or just plonk?<\/p>\n

Of course you can taste strange grapes in some out-of-the-way places on an overseas visit, but increasingly this is also a possibility in more familiar areas.\u00a0 For example, David Coffaro Vineyard and Winery sells all sorts of odd varietals, like 100% Aglianico.\u00a0 Grgich Hills offers some wines that Mike Grgich has been producing in Croatia, like Po\u0161ip and Plavac Mali.\u00a0 You\u2019re more likely to enjoy the wines than pronounce them. \u00a0Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles has a Tannat.\u00a0 Tannat anyone?<\/p>\n

You should remember that even among the best\u00a0 known grapes, there was a time you hadn\u2019t tasted them either.\u00a0 You were probably pretty young and your taste buds not very experienced, but still, how did you react?\u00a0 Steve well remembers the first time he tasted Shiraz, and alternative name for Syrah and very popular these days.\u00a0 But at that time, Shiraz was limited to Australian wines, primarily from the Barossa region.\u00a0 His first reaction was, \u201cThis wine has gone bad.\u201d\u00a0 Then he realized that it wasn\u2019t sour or distasteful and, in fact, it was quite good.\u00a0 So that\u2019s the primary advice: Keep an open mind<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 And mouth, for that matter.<\/p>\n

We recently traveled in Southwest France and discovered wines from the area between Albi and Gaillac, known by the name of the former town.\u00a0 The primary grapes in Gaillacs are Duras and Braucol.\u00a0 Never heard of them?\u00a0 Neither had we.\u00a0 (Braucol, according to Wikipedia, is a local name for Fer.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t help much, because we haven\u2019t heard of Fer either.) \u00a0So the first thing we did (and we recommend that you do) was to think about what the wine tasted like<\/em><\/strong> and smelled like.\u00a0 Gaillac, based on a sampling of six or so bottles, is relatively light bodied, fruity, with a similarity to a Cabernet Sauvignon from somewhere other than Medoc or Napa.\u00a0 Think a lesser area of Bordeaux, like Cote de Bourg.\u00a0 The idea is not to be a wine geek, but to orient your taste buds and relate what you\u2019re tasting with what you\u2019ve tasted before.<\/p>\n

\"img_4002\"<\/a>Albi<\/em><\/p>\n

Now that you\u2019ve thought about what a wine made from previously unknown grapes is like, give some thought to why the wine is different from what you\u2019ve ever tasted before<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t have to be a deep exercise in oenology; wine snobbery is not required.\u00a0 Just trust your mouth.\u00a0 If you like this new wine or even if you don\u2019t, try to articulate why, without reference to anything else you already know.\u00a0 Words like deep, round, acid, flat, fruity, flowery, and mellow<\/em> should come to mind.\u00a0 In other words, you should be using a normal vocabulary.\u00a0 By putting your taste into words, you\u2019ll have a much better understanding of what make a unique wine (to your experience) unique.<\/p>\n

In the long run, you are most likely to continue to buy the wines made from grapes you\u2019re already familiar with.\u00a0 There is, after all, a reason that they are the most popular in the world.\u00a0 But the core of wine tasting is discovery, so keep trying wines with funny names, made from grapes you never tasted before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s face it: in terms of the grapes we drink these days, we\u2019ve all become pretty boring and pretty French.\u00a0 The majority of what we drink and the majority of what we sip when we go wine tasting are derived from four regions of France.\u00a0 There are the Bordeaux grapes, in particular Cabernet Sauvignon and … Continue reading Grapes You\u2019ve Never Tasted<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}