{"id":2100,"date":"2022-05-29T18:06:21","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T18:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2100"},"modified":"2022-05-29T18:29:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T18:29:23","slug":"know-your-vineyards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2100","title":{"rendered":"Know Your Vineyards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wines come from and are known by certain regions.\u00a0 They are AVAs in the United States, AOCs in France, DOCGs in Italy, etc.\u00a0 In each one of those regions, there are many vineyards, some clearly better than others.\u00a0 Knowing which ones are the best can lead to greater pleasure when you go wine tasting.\u00a0 That sounds simple, but it gets more confusing depending on which sector of Wine Country you are visiting and how they allocate the land.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/bien-nacido2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-2101 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/bien-nacido2-300x184.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"654\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/bien-nacido2-300x184.jpg 300w, https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/bien-nacido2-768x470.jpg 768w, https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/bien-nacido2-1024x627.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/bien-nacido2.jpg 1950w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 654px) 100vw, 654px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Bien Nacido Vineyards in Santa Maria, California.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of biennacidoestate.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>In Bordeaux, it\u2019s easy.<\/strong> The rules there are that all the grapes in a wine identified with a specific chateau or domain must be grown on its property.\u00a0 If you see a wine simply called a Bordeaux on the label, it can be from anywhere in the region.<\/li>\n<li><strong>In Burgundy, it\u2019s difficult.<\/strong> In many cases, growers don\u2019t own vineyards, they own parcels or even individual rows of grapes, within identified vineyards.\u00a0 And those may be <em>villages<\/em>, <em>premier cru<\/em> or <em>grand cru <\/em>depending on the <em>terroirs<\/em> of each.\u00a0 So wines made from grapes grown in certain well-known vineyards such as Chambertin or <a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=407\">Clos de Vougeot <\/a>are the ones you should look for.<\/li>\n<li><strong>In California, things can get a little tricky, too.<\/strong> Many wineries boast of their \u201cEstate\u201d or \u201cEstate Grown\u201d wines.\u00a0 That means that the grapes for those wines came from the producer\u2019s own property, were cultivated by its own staff and were vinified on the premises as well.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t mean that the grapes are necessarily the ones you can see out the tasting room window.\u00a0 They can come from anywhere in the AVA that\u2019s indicated on the bottle.<\/li>\n<li><strong>But not all wines are \u201cEstate\u201d.<\/strong> Many wineries make wine but don\u2019t do the farming themselves.\u00a0 (And many wineries that do have Estate wines also make wine from purchased grapes.)\u00a0 When you are sampling a wine that isn\u2019t Estate, it\u2019s fair to ask which vineyards the grapes come from.\u00a0 There are some so highly regarded that the name of the vineyard alone is enough to make a taste desirable.<\/li>\n<li><strong>For example, <\/strong>in Napa Valley, Beckstoffer is the acknowledged leader. And within Beckstoffer\u2019s properties there\u2019s the To Kalon, made justly famous by <a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1595\">Robert Mondavi<\/a>.\u00a0 Morisoli in the Rutherford Bench is also well reputed, as is Stagecoach high up on the mountains to Napa Valley\u2019s east.<\/li>\n<li><strong>To confuse matters further, <\/strong>some growers sell most of their grapes and also make their own wines. So, for example, <a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=109\">Truchard<\/a> and Baciagalupi are major sources for many wineries. The former\u2019s wide variety of grapes, especially Chardonnay, can be found in many wines around Napa.\u00a0 Baciagalupi in Russian River grows Pinot Noir and Chardonnay for many other wineries.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Further south, <\/strong>look for any wine made from grapes from the Bien Nacido vineyard. In the Central Coast, many wineries boast their wines from that vineyard, with <a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=931\">Au Bon Climat<\/a> claiming the largest share.<\/li>\n<li><strong>And in the Santa Barbara area, <\/strong>Sanford and Fiddlestix vineyards have great reputations. <a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=634\">Sanford<\/a> also makes wines under their own name, while <a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=491\">Etude<\/a> (among others) makes a Fiddlestix Pinot Noir.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wines come from and are known by certain regions.\u00a0 They are AVAs in the United States, AOCs in France, DOCGs in Italy, etc.\u00a0 In each one of those regions, there are many vineyards, some clearly better than others.\u00a0 Knowing which ones are the best can lead to greater pleasure when you go wine tasting.\u00a0 That &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2100\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Know Your Vineyards<\/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":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2112,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions\/2112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}