The Art of Tasting Wine with James Flewellen: Top 10 White Wine Grapes

Published by Sunday, June 23, 2013 Permalink 0

The Art of Tasting Wine with James Flewellen: Top 10 White Wine Grapes

by James Flewellen

With over 1,300(!) vine varieties out there making commercial wine, it’s a tough task to narrow down to only 10. Nevertheless, here are my ‘top 10’ white wine producing grapes. The order is my own preference, based on commercial importance, potential quality of the grape and whether it produces a ‘classic style’.

10. Albariño

Deutsch: Albariño-Weingut. Weingut Granbazan. ...

Bodega Granbazán en las Rías Baixas, producer of Albariño

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps a controversial start to the list, Albariño is a rising star in my book. The grape can produce well-balanced aromatic, peachy wines with fresh acidity, suitable as an aperitif or with fish and vegetarian dishes. It’s not yet grown much outside its native Galicia in Spain (and parts of Portugal), yet its stature is certainly on the up and much interest is being shown in growing the grape in a number of new world countries.

9. Gewurztraminer

Tramin - Gewurztraminer Grapes

Tramin – Gewurztraminer Grapes (Photo credit: Lynne Hand)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A very distinctive grape producing ‘love-em or hate-em’ wines. Gewurztraminer has its spiritual home in Alsace, France, though can be found throughout Central Europe and in many new world countries. The grape is typically pink-skinned and produces an abundance of sugars in the right growing conditions. This leads to deeply-coloured, rich, full-bodied wines – many of which are off-dry, or even sweet. Gewurztraminer wines are flamboyantly fragrant with unmistakable notes of lychee, pot pourri and sometimes cloves.

8. Viognier

English: Viognier grapes ripening on a vine in...

Viognier grapes ripening on a vine in Amador county, California.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another full-bodied, distinctively aromatic wine. Viognier brings forth characteristic notes of peach, apricot and ginger. The very best examples come from the tiny appellation of Condrieu, in the Rhône Valley in France. However, it is found in the blended white wines of southern France, and increasingly in the new world. A single producer in the Barossa, South Australia — Yalumba — could be credited with re-popularising this grape and bringing it to a new audience in the modern era.

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The Art of Tasting Wine with James Flewellen: Using your nose: Aromas in white wines

Published by Monday, August 27, 2012 Permalink 0

by James Flewellen

For me, the greatest tragedy of having a cold is not hours spent in bed when I could be out doing something ‘productive’. Rather, it’s losing my sense of smell with a blocked nose: food simply doesn’t taste the same!

Just like food, the aroma of a wine is very important to our overall perception, and enjoyment, of it. We smell a wine without even trying when we go to drink it. Our taste buds are immediately informed about what to expect and we unconsciously assess the flavour of a wine based on whether it lives up to how it smelled. We even have smell sensors that can be reached from inside our mouth. These are especially triggered by wine, whose alcoholic content helps lift the aroma molecules to reach these sensors even after we swallow. Wine can be such a complex beverage, it’s a shame not to experience fully everything it has to offer, which is why you’ll see wine geeks swirling a glass of fine wine and sticking their noses in endlessly, before even taking a sip!

Image Copyright. All Rights Reserved.

When pairing food and wine think also about complimenting the aromas of each. The stone fruit and honey aromas of this Tokaji paired very well with an apricot tarte tatin.

Given the density of aroma molecules found in a wine and a human’s comparatively poor sense of smell, it can sometimes be a challenge identifying what it is we’re actually smelling in a wine. This is no bad thing — if you can immediately name a single thing a wine smells like, it’s a sign that it’s not particularly complex or interesting wine.

To help simplify things I like to break up the aromas I might be getting in a wine into different categories. Firstly I focus on the ‘fruit’ aspect of the bouquet. Does the wine smell ‘fruity’ or is the nose (wine term for ‘aroma’) dominated by non-fruit aromas? Or perhaps they are both there in equal measure. If fruity, what sort of fruits?

For white wines, I tend to think of a ‘fruit spectrum’. At one end of the scale we have cool climate fruits, such as apples, pears, lemon and grapefruit. We move through to stone fruit — peaches, apricots — and then to tropical fruits — for instance pineapple, guava, mango. This ‘spectrum’ is an indication of the ripeness of the grapes and can give us a clue as to the climate in which the grapes are grown. To generalise, the more towards the tropical end of the spectrum, the warmer the climate.

Part of the ‘fruit spectrum’.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule, and some wines have distinct aromas of certain fruits — Gewurztraminer typically smells of lychee for instance. It’s interesting to note that very few wines actually smell of ‘grapes’. Perhaps this reflects the reduced variation in table grapes we have available to us in a globalised, homogenised food market — most of the table grapes I’ve seen in supermarkets around the world are Thompson Seedless. Although there is of course the argument that if grapes are fine enough to be made into wine, why would you waste them on a table! Wines made from Muscat are one exception to this rule, and are often described as having a ‘grapey’ aroma.

As far as non-fruit aromas go, we can have vegetal or herbaceous aromas — Sauvignon Blanc is often described as smelling of gooseberry and nettle, or even tomato leaf. Shelled peas, grass and hay are all terms I’ve used more than once too. Wines can smell musty or animally too, which is not always a pejorative term. Loire Chenin Blanc can have an intriguing aroma commonly referred to as ‘wet wool’! And of course we have flowers. Muscat smells of orange blossom; Chablis can be reminiscent of lilies. If you know your flowers you’ll be able to discover all sorts of comparisons with wine.Image Copyright. All Rights Reserved

You’ll often hear the term ‘minerality’ thrown about in wine descriptions. Minerality is more commonly used to describe a component of taste, and exactly what it means is a matter than is hotly debated. As far as aromas go, some wines do have a sort of chemical smell such as flint, gunpowder, kerosene, petrol or wet asphalt. Again, these are not always used in a negative way. The most complex wines will have elements from all categories in varying degrees and over the course of a meal or tasting different aspects of the bouquet will come to the fore, while others will recede in prominence as your nose gets used to smelling them.

The final aspect of the nose of a white wine may be the presence of oak. If a wine has been aged in new French oak, you may expect aromas of vanilla, butter, nuts, spices, or even freshly sawn planks — if the wine is very young. American oak has a more lifted, slightly confected aroma often described as coconut, but also as white chocolate.

As you’re picking up, wine is a complex concerto of hundreds of aromatic compounds. As humans, we’re lucky enough to be able to smell even some of the, though it can take practice to identify what exactly we smell. As with everything though, it is simply a matter of starting to pay attention to what we’re smelling, both in and out of the glass.

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Food News Daily: September 13, 2011

Published by Tuesday, September 13, 2011 Permalink 0

Mainstream Anglo Media and Press

Dinner with a side of yodeling, Chicago Tribune

The Next Big Thing: Peruvian Food, The Wall Street Journal

Lemon squares, New Zealand Herald

Nutrition app to ‘separate fat from fiction’, The Sydney Morning Herald

36 Hours in Bern, The New York Times

Antibiotics in Pork Draw More Scrutiny By Inspectors, The Wall Street Journal

Hunting for the great white grape, San Francisco Chronicle

Sous-vide cooking gives chefs an option (Thomas Keller), Los Angeles Times

How to Cook a Complete Indian Meal, Times of India

Food Photography

Cherry composition, Alessandro Guerani

Best of the Anglo Food and Travel Blogs and Sites

Blueberry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, My Baking Addiction

The Best Mashed Potatoes: Really What Does that Mean?, Creative Culinary

Dan Barber, Renowned Chefs Draft Letter to Young Chefs (video), Eater

Bratwurst with jalapeño-peach mustard, Broke Ass Gourmet

TV Dinners: Grand or Gauche?, Leite’s Culinaria

Alternative Press/Sites

Cooking Survey Reveals That 28% Of Americans Can’t Cook, Huffington Post Food

Flawed Fruit: The Not-So-Rosy Reality of Industrial Tomato Farming in America, Mother Earth News

The New Dirty Dozen: 12 Foods to Eat Organic, The Daily Green

World

Comer en la Escuela, A Table

Little Chefs, Best Shellers, Printing Food and Human-Derived Gelatin: The new gastro generation, Food Meditations

Salada com queijos, Vovó que ensinou

 

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