Category Archives: Wines

France, Wines

Wine Notes: Aligoté

 

What I Learned

Bouzeron is famed for its Aligoté wine. In fact, the small village holds the distinction of having the only village AOC in France dedicated to the Aligoté varietal, Appellation Bouzeron Controlee. The Aligoté grape and its wines tended be overlooked in the past, but made a comeback. Nowadays, they are often promoted as aperitive wines as their taste tends to be light, fruity and crisp.

Aligoté is a hybrid of the red/black Pinot Noir and the Gouais Blanc grapes. First mentions of this grape appeared in the late 1700s. Because it does well in cold grape-growing regions, it has recently been planted in Washington State, Chile and some Eastern European nations. As a flavor profile, Aligoté wines often have citrus, green apple, and white floral notes. This also makes them ideal for one of region’s most favored aperitive wines, the sparkling Cremant de Bourgogne, on its own or blended with Chardonnay. (In this case, the resulting sparkling wine could fall under the Appellation Cremant de Bourgogne).

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France, Wines

Wine Notes: Mercurey

 

What I Learned

Mercurey is a small appellation in the Cote Chalonnaise wine sub-region of Burgundy. This appellation has about 800 hectares under vine, spread between the villages of Saint Martin sous Montaigu, and Mercurey, with its hamlets of Touches, Chamirey and Etroyes. A number of Premier Cru are found throughout this area. Viewing the area, one is struck by the number of clos – enclosed vineyards.

About 85 percent of total harvest comes from its famed Pinot Noir grapes, which do exceptionally well in its soils. A parcel entitled Les Ruelles is known in particular for its clay soil, almost blood red in color due to its high iron content, giving wines from this parcel distinct flavors. Total red wine production in this AOC is about 3.3 million bottles every year.

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Germany, Wines

Wine Notes: Terraced Moselle

 

 What I Learned:

Germany’s Moselle River region is as an important wine-producing area in Germany as the Rhine region. Called the “Mosel,” in German, it is also important to the wine industries in Luxembourg, and Lorraine, France. It is the oldest wine producing region in Germany.

The Moselle is famous for its slate. Ribs of the stuff poke out from the earth, and chunks of it cover the ground under the vines. While the Moselle is not as long as the Rhine, it is so diverse as it flows northeast through Germany, that it can be divided into distinct wine areas. Germans refer to these Moselle sections as the Upper Moselle, beginning at the French border, the Middle Moselle, and the Lower Moselle, ending at Koblenz.

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Germany, Wines

Wine Notes: Saxony

 

What I Learned

Winemaking came comparatively late to the German wine region of Saxony. According to legend, the noble Bishop of Meissen, Benno, was the first to introduce vines to this area around the year 1100. These first vines were supposedly planted near the mount of Meissen, where the castle and cathedral now stand. About 60 years later, wine-making in Meissen was historically documented.  While not the northern-most wine region in Germany, it is the eastern-most wine region, being rather close to both the Polish and Czech borders. Here, the wine region’s vineyards follow the course of the Elbe River, as it enters German from the Czech Republic. The majority of the vineyards are on the right bank (eastern side) of the river, on the south and west facing slopes. With only about 500 hectares (about 1250 acres) ranging along about 50 kilometers of the Elbe, it is one of Germany’s smallest designated wine regions.

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France, Wines

Wine Notes: Cote Rotie

 

What I Learned

France’s great Northern Rhone River Valley appellations begin about 20 miles downriver from Lyon by Ampuis. Eight appellations in total from north to south, the famous Cote Rotie appellation, on the river’s right bank, is where some of the worlds famous vineyards and wines begin.

The appellation begins in Saint Cyr-sur-le Rhone, and ends in Tupin-et-Semons. Ampuis, in the middle, is particularly well situated as its slopes face in a more southerly direction. Vines have been planted on the slopes overlooking Ampuis for over 2500 years. The town has two famous slopes: Cote Brune and Cote Blonde. Legend says that these names arose when the local count provided the slope now known as Cote Blonde as a dowry for his fair-haired daughter, and the slope now called Cote Brune for his brunette daughter. The soil in this appellation is an iron-rich schist soil, overlaid by limestone and granitic components. Some wine enthusiasts find in general that, due to slight soil differences, Cote Blonde produces a softer style of wine, and Cote Brune, with more clay in the soil mix, tends to result in bigger and more powerful wines.

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Italy, Wines

Wine Notes: Bardolino

 

What I Learned

The DOC Bardolino zone centers around the small town of Bardolino, east of the shores of Lake Garda, in northern Italy.

This zone produces both DOC Bardolino, and Doc Chiaretto wines. These wines come from the Corvina Veronese grape, also known simply as Corvina. Some Rondinella, and sometimes Molinara, also the main grapes of the adjoining Valpolicella region may be found in blends of Bardolino or Chiaretto wines.

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Germany, Wines

Wine Notes: Baden’s Hochrhein

 

What I Learned:

Hohentengen am Hochrhein, is in an area south of the Swiss Canton of Schaffhausen, and the Klettgau wine district, west of the Swiss town of Eglisau in the Canton of Zurich, and to its south is the Swiss town of Kaiserstuhl. But this wine-producing area is part of Germany’s Baden wine region, Bodensee district. Its micro-climate is similar: cool, but not frigid in winter, elevated, but not mountainous, and warm, even occasionally hot, in the summer. In short, it is good for vines. Like the area of Lake Constance in general, this area gets a fair amount of sun, considering its German/Swiss location. Vines have been here, off and on, for over a millennium. Currently, the Engelhof Winery has planted about 25 hectares to the west of Hohentengen, on the Oelberg slope, which has an excellent southern exposure.

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Germany, Wines

Wine Notes: Kraichgau

 

What I Learned

The Kraichgau district of the Baden wine region is relatively small, only about 1200 hectares overall. Known as the “Land of a Thousand Hills,” the Kraichgau is a slice of hilly territory located east of the Rhine, north of Karlsruhe and south of Heidelberg. This district is less well-known than many other Baden districts, and is characterized by small, farming (or now commuter) communities. The better-known Ortenau district of Baden begins south of the Kraichgau.

Grosslage Mannaberg, extending from Bruchsal through Ostringen to Wiesloch, has as growths: Kirchberg, Ulrichsberg, Schlossberg, Burgengraf and Heiligenstein.

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France, Wines

Wine Notes: Corbieres Queribus

 

What I Learned

The Appellation d’Origine Controlee (AOC) Corbieres, is a relatively large area between Perpignan and Narbonne, west almost to Carcassonne. It is in the southwestern region of France known as Languedoc-Rousillon. Corbieres is large enough to merit division into eleven separate terroirs, or areas, one of which is Queribus. (Queribus is the name of a famous Cathar castle, in southern (Hautes) Corbieres, overlooking the towns within the terroir.) The appellation Corbieres-Queribus contains the following towns: Cucugnan, Duilhac sous Peyrepertuse, and Padern. The red wines from Corbieres-Queribus (most of the appellation’s production) derive from the red varietals of Carignan, Grenache, Cinsault, Mouvedre and Syrah; while the whites wines come from Bourboulenc (aka Malvoisie), Marsanne, Muscat, Maccabeu, and Piquepoul.

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Italy, Wines

Wine Notes: Collio

 

What I Learned

In the far northeast corner of Italy, bordered on the north and east by Slovenia, lies Italy’s wine paradise of the Collio. Not to be confused with its northern and western wine region neighbor, the Colli Orientale di Friuli, the Collio region likewise falls within the Italian region of Friuli. The Collio wine region, which has its own Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) status, is a relatively small enclave of approximately 1600 hectares (about 4000 acres), running south to north from Gorizia to Dolegna. Cormons, a town larger in fame within wine circles than in size, is at its spiritual, if not geographical, center.

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