Wine-Secrets About Grape Variety
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Why Grapes Matter To Us
Grapes are the starting point of every wine, and therefore they are largely
responsible for the style and personality of each wine. The grapes that make
a particular wine dictate the genetic structure of that wine and how it will
respond to everything that the winemaker does to it.
Think back to the last wine you drank. What colour was it? If it was white, the
odds are that’s because it came from white grapes; if it was pink or red, that’s
because the wine came from red grapes.
Did it smell herbal or earthy or fruity? Whichever, those aromas came mainly
from the grapes. Was it firm and tannic or soft and voluptuous? Thank the
grapes – with a nod to Mother Nature and the winemaker.
The specific grape variety (or varieties) that make any given wine is largely
responsible for the sensory characteristics the wine offers – from its appearance
to its aromas, its flavours, and its alcohol-tannin-acid profile. How the
grapes grow – the amount of sunshine and moisture they get, for example,
and how ripe they are when they’re harvested – can emphasize certain of
their characteristics rather than others. So can winemaking processes such
as oak aging. Each grape variety reacts in its own way to the
farming and winemaking techniques that it faces.
On The Grapevine
By grape variety, we mean the fruit of a specific type of grapevine: the fruit of
the Cabernet Sauvignon vine, for example, or of the Chardonnay vine.
The term variety actually has specific meaning in scientific circles. A variety
is a subdivision of a species. Most of the world’s wines are made from grape
varieties that belong to the species vinifera – itself a subdivision of the
genus Vitis. This species originated in Europe and western Asia; other distinct
species of Vitis are native to North America.
Grapes of other species can also make wine; for example, the Concord grape,
which makes Concord wine as well as grape juice and jelly, belongs to the
native American species Vitis labrusca. But the grapes of this species have a
very different flavor from vinifera grapes – foxy is the word used to describe
that taste. The number of non-vinifera wines is small because their flavor is
less popular in wine.
A Variety Of Varieties
Within the genus Vitis and the species vinifera, there are as many as
10,000 varieties of wine grapes. If wine from every one of these varieties were
commercially available and you drank the wine of a different variety every
single day, it would take you more than 27 years to experience them all!
Not that you would want to. Within those 10,000 varieties are grapes that
have the ability to make extraordinary wine, grapes that tend to make very
ordinary wine, and grapes that only a parent could love. Most varieties are
obscure grapes whose wines rarely enter into international commerce.
An extremely adventuresome grape nut who has plenty of free time to explore
the back roads of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece might be able to encounter
1,500 different grape varieties (only four years’ worth of drinking) in his lifetime.
The grape varieties you might encounter in the course of your normal wine
enjoyment probably number fewer than 50.
Useful Information
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Category Food
Posted Monday, January 24th, 2011
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