Chenin Blanc is known elsewhere as Pineau de la Loire. It is the most-planted grape in South Africa, where its local name is Steen. Chenin Blanc is a high volume producer, so the wines it produces tend to be fairly inexpensive. Western Australia’s Margaret River produces some of the world’s finest Chenin Blanc, but, because of its remoteness, they are hard to find in America.
Cinsaut is a red wine grape, very heat-tolerant and high-yielding. Both these qualities made it especially popular to French winegrowers in Languedoc-Roussillon and across the sea in Algeria and Morocco. The bulk wines of Cinsaut were used for blending with more prestigious wines, to which they added softness and bouquet. Following the Phylloxera epidemic, most vineyards in South Africa were replanted with Cinsaut, which was locally called Hermitage. Crossed with Pinot Noir, it became Pinotage, the signature wine of South Africa.
Claret (Keats): Claret is the name of the red wine blended in Bordeaux for the English market. Six grapes are permitted to be used in the blend: Cabernet Sauvignon for its tannins, Merlot for its softer fruitiness, Carménère for its rich aromas, Cabernet Franc for its earthiness, Malbec for its dark color, and Petit Verdot for its structure and body. In the Middle Ages, the wine was called “vinum clairum” or “vin clar,” from which the English derived the term claret. Today, there is a Bordeaux dark rosé wine called “Clairet,” which is full-bodied and deep-colored, and apparently similar to the original claret. Californian winemakers have recently begun blending wines in imitation of this Bordeaux/Claret style, which they label as Meritage.
In terms of literary pairings, there is no question that the honor must go to the English poet John Keats. In the spring of 1819, he wrote to his brother George as follows:
“Now I like Claret and whenever I can have Claret I must drink it. It is the only palate affair that I am at all sensual in. For really it is so fine. It fills the mouth, one’s mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down cool and feverless, then you do not feel it quarrelling with your liver, no it is rather a Peace maker and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee; and the more ethereal part of it mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments like a bully in a bad house looking for his trul and hurrying from door to door bouncing against the wainscot; but rather walks like Aladdin about his own enchanted palace so gently that you do not feel his step. Other wines of a heavy and spirituous nature transform a Man into a Silenus; this makes him a Hermes, and gives a Woman the soul and immortality of Ariadne for whom Bacchus always kept a good cellar of claret.”
Colombard: A white grape widely-planted on the west coast of France for making Armagnac and Cognac brandy. It is also grown in California for making jug wines.
Concord: Concord is a grape made from the Native American vine, Vitis labrusca. It is mainly used for table grapes and jellies, but is also sometimes used for winemaking in the Eastern USA and Canada. It is said to be distinguished by its “foxy” taste (whatever that might mean).
Corvina (Dante): Along with the varietals Rondinella and Molinara, this is the principal grape which makes the famous wines of Verona, on Lake Garda: Valpolicella and Amarone. Valpolicella wine has dark cherry and spice flavors. After the grapes undergo appassimento (a drying process), the wine is called Amarone and is extremely high in alcohol (16 percent and higher), and full of raisin, prune, and syrupy fruits. Some Amarones can age for over forty years and command spectacular prices. In December 2009, Amarone di Valpolicella was finally awarded its long-deserved DOCG status.
Although Dante Alighieri will forever be associated with Florence and the Chianti wines of Tuscany, he also spent several years of his exile in Verona. His son, Pietro, came to love the beauty of the city and its countryside, and so decided to remain in the area, purchasing the Casal dei Ronchi in Gargagnago estate in the heart of the historic Valpolicella region in 1353. Twenty-one generations later, both house and estate still belong to Dante’s direct descendants, the Counts Serego Alighieri. Today, the Villa stands surrounded by Valpolicella vineyards, the center of traditional farming activities associated with a large and flourishing estate, with the nearby Foresteria providing accommodation for guests—no doubt in descending levels of hospitality and comfort.
Crljenak Kaštelanski: (See Zinfandel)
Dolcetto: A grape that grows alongside Barbera and Nebbiolo in Piedmont, its name means “little sweet one,” referring not to the taste of the wine, but the ease with which it grows, and makes great wines suitable for everyday drinking. Flavors of licorice, cherry, wild blackberries, and herbs permeate the wine. Because the skins are high in tannins, the wines are very dark, with a bitter finish to the taste.
Gamay (Keats): Perhaps more than any other grape varietal, Gamay identifies with a single geographic location. More than half of the world’s Gamay grapes are grown in the Beaujolais region around Lyon in Southern Burgundy. The Gamay vine is far easier to grow than Pinot Noir, for example; it flowers early and produces prolifically, resulting in generous harvest of juice. The city of Lyon is located at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers, and because the Gamay grape produces so much wine, it is known as the “third river of Lyon.” But what it offers in quantity, it lacks in quality; the Gamay wines are pale for red wines, high in acid and low in alcohol. They do, however, make a refreshingly light, midday drink, and are the first wines in France permitted to be sold after harvest. Beaujolais Nouveau, made from the Gamay grape, is permitted to be sold as early as the third Thursday in November.
The Gamay grape is the only varietal grown in Beaujolais, just as the Pinot Noir is the only red varietal grown across the border in Burgundy. A July 1395 edict of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy described the Gamay grape as being an “evil and disloyal plant with very great and terrible bitterness … injurious to the human creature.” He banned it from the Dukedom and ordered all vines to be “extirpated, destroyed and reduced to nothing.”
Despite the poor reputation the wine has developed over the past few decades because of the rage for Beaujolais Nouveau, Beaujolais is still a delightful lunchtime drink, and John Keats, in his Ode to a Skylark, can only have been referring to Beaujolais when he wrote:
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
Gewürztraminer (Marcel Proust): Gewürztraminer is noted for its floral fragrance and spicy flavors. It was originally a clone of the Traminer grape from the village of Tramin in the Tyrol of Northern Italy, which was for a long time part of the Austrian empire. The musqué, or more floral version of the Traminer grape, is now so widely grown that Gewürztraminer is now considered a grape variety in its own right. Widely planted in the Rhineland of Germany, it has found its greatest success across the French border in Alsace. Because it thrives best in cool rather than warm climates, it is also grown successfully in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Germany, and New Zealand. However, the Gewürztraminers of Alsace are in a superior class all by themselves.
Gewürztraminer is often paired with spicy foods, and some argue that it is one of the few wines which can be successfully paired with Asian cuisine. Others disagree strongly. Gewürztraminer can be made in styles that range from completely dry to semi-dry, and can also be made in a late harvest dessert wine style that is delicious. This is especially true in Alsace. When you taste your first glass of Alsatian Gewürztraminer, you will imagine that somebody has entered the room with a bouquet of fresh flowers whose aroma of floral purity acknowledges all your better virtues, and will give you the power and determination to become a more worthy person, better able to live up to all the subtle promises of the wine’s bouquet.
As a literary pairing, the Gewürztraminer of Alsace deserves no lesser a writer than Marcel Proust, and not just because his mother, Jeanne Weil’s, family came from Alsace. Despite th
e wine’s underlying acidity, its sharpness and acuity is hidden behind a rich, floral bouquet that charms with a mellifluous harmony that simply overwhelms the senses. In the same way, Proust, the writer, hides his sharp and extremely comic insights into human nature behind a screen of poetically seductive images. The first taste from a glass of Gewürztraminer, or a random passage read from In Search of Lost Time, leaves us standing alone in ecstasy, inhaling through the rain, the lingering scent of invisible lilacs.
On a personal note, the Gewürztraminer of Alsace is my favorite white wine, and Marcel Proust is my favorite novelist of all time. Case closed!
Grenache/Garnacha is a soft, spicy grape, and is one of the most-widely planted in the world. It is extensively planted along the Mediterranean coast particularly, between Northern Spain and the Rhône valley in France. The Grenache produces wines that, in their youth, are fruity, full of flavor, and have overtones of spice. Wines made from the Grenache are usually light in color and are often blended with other grape varieties. The Grenache grape resists heat and tolerates limited rainfall.
In France, Grenache is used in making red and rosé (Tavel and Lirac) wines in the Rhône river valley where it is widely planted. Grenache is also widely-planted in Spain, where it is known as Garnacha Tinta, and in Catalonia and Mallorca, where it is called Garnatxa. In the United States, it is grown in California, where it is almost exclusively a blending grape for rosé wines. Lacking tannins or color, Grenache is not known for producing wines that age well over a long period of time. This tends to be the “go-to” red wine for white wine drinkers, and are usually best consumed when young.
Grüner Veltliner (Hašek): Gruner Veltliner is the most popular grape variety in Austria—white, light, and peppery. Delicious when young and lively, but it also can be aged as long as five years. If Riesling is the grape of the Rhine, Grüner Veltliner is the grape of the Danube, and grows widely in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, as well as in Austria. Like most of the other white wines, it is best enjoyed young, fresh, and innocent.
What could be more fresh, young, and innocent, than the Good Soldier Švejk, stumbling hilariously around the Danube river and Bohemia during the farcical collapse of the Hapsburg Empire during the First World War? Like Joseph Heller’s novel Catch 22, Jaroslav Hašek’s sadly unfinished novel about a Czech dealer in stolen dogs who signs up for the Austrian army is a classic of military satire. Surrounded by the pomposity and inefficiency of the Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy, batman Švejk’s hilarious stories and misadventures are as refreshing and peppery as a fresh glass of Gruner Veltliner.
Malbec (Borges): Malbec is one of the six grape varieties approved for making red wines in the Bordeaux region of France where it originated. In Bordeaux, Malbec is used like a spice, blended with other wines for its strong dark color (but making up a very small percentage of the final blend), and is being grown less and less every year. The only place in France where Malbec is bottled unblended is around the town of Cahors, slightly southeast of Bordeaux.
On the other hand, Malbec has found a new home and a new following in Argentina. Some of the best Malbecs can be described as dry, mouth-filling, and sumptuous. Elsewhere in the world, Malbec is only planted in small amounts. Malbec is usually included in plantings and blends simply because of its background in Bordeaux. It is a thin-skinned grape that needs more sun and heat than either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot to mature.
For some reason, the hot, dry conditions of the high-altitude Andean vineyards of Argentina and even Bolivia have proved to be perfect for the Malbec grape, and have finally revealed its full, glorious potential. Powerful and full-bodied Malbec wines from Mendoza Province are now the backbone of a rejuvenated Argentinian wine industry.
Just as it was the hitherto ignored Malbec grape which heralded and championed the dramatic arrival of Argentinian wines upon the world stage, so too it was the writings of an obscure Argentinian librarian, Jorge Luis Borges, that introduced the world to Latin American literature. The success of Borges’ short stories in the late ’50s introduced the world to magical realism, and the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes.
Borges’ stories are filled with extremes: a man who forgets no experience in his life, a library that contains every possible arrangement of letters in a 410 page text, a small sphere from which it is possible to view every single part of the universe, and a garden of forking paths which lead in every possible direction. Malbec too is a vine of extremes; while vineyards in Europe are seldom planted higher than 1,500 feet, Malbec vineyards in Mendoza are planted as high as five thousand feet and more.
In his poetry, Borges often referred to wine and how it flowed through time as well as cultures, linking his own history to that of the Babylonians, with whom he was fascinated and who feature in many of his poems, like “To Wine:”:
Wine, flows red along with the generations
and on the arduous road like the river of time
pours on us its music, its fire and its lions.
On the night of joy or on the hostile day
it exalts the glee or soothes the horror…
Malvasia (Shakespeare): Known in France as Malvoisie and related to the ancient Greek grape Malagousia, this light-skinned grape is grown all over the Mediterranean, especially in Italy and Spain and even out in the Atlantic, where it makes Madeira, known by the English as Malmsey. It was, of course, in a barrel of Malmsey that, according to Shakespeare, the Duke of Clarence was drowned by order of his brother, Richard III.
Marsanne & Roussanne: Marsanne and Roussanne are both white grapes mainly grown in the Rhône valley. Though both can be bottled and drunk by themselves, they are more usually blended together or with other varietals. Along with Viognier, these are the only three white grape varietals permitted in the Northern Rhône. Marsanne tends to be full-bodied and deep-colored while Rosanne is noted more for what wine critic Jancis Robinson calls its “haunting aroma.”
Melon de Bourgogne: See Muscadet
Meritage: See Claret.
Merlot (F. Scott Fitzgerald): Unlike the small dark berries of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot grapes are characterized by loose bunches of lighter-hued grapes with thinner skins and thus less tannin and malic acids, but more sugar. Like the Chardonnay grape, Merlot is an early-ripening, easily-grown, and forgiving varietal. Originally grown in Bordeaux, it was traditionally used for blending and adding more softness and fleshiness to the harsher and more tannic Cabernet Sauvignon. Not only is Merlot usually grown in the same regions and often blended with Cabernet Sauvignon, but the two varietals are close cousins and share many characteristics. Though grown in the same regions as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot is usually grown in the cooler part of the region so as not to ripen too early. Lower in tannins, Merlot makes wines that mature faster and are softer in texture, both of which have caused its surge in popularity since the early 1990s. At its best, Merlot makes a wine that is dry, rich in flavor, and smooth, as it settles in your throat. At its worst, Merlot makes wine that is dry but thin in taste and texture, and disappointingly mediocre to drink.
Merlot usually has ripe berry components in the bouquet. Its wines tend to be soft, fruity, and smooth in texture, but vary widely in quality around the world depending on location and producer. Although it is more susceptible to fungus and mold diseases, and therefore more challenging to grow, Merlot is able to mature in regions that are cooler than those required for Cabernet Sauvignon. Select Merlots can have long aging potential, but most are ready to consume in four to eight years. Wherever it is grown, Merlot is usually bottled in a Bordeaux (high shouldered) bottle.
First recognized internationally for its success on the right bank of Bordeaux, in the Saint-Émilion and Pomerol AOCs, Merlot has recently become one of the most popular and widely-planted varietals in the world. Not even included in the 1855 Bordeaux classification of great wines, which were dominated by the Cabern
et Sauvignons of the left bank, certain Pomerols and St.-Émilions now command higher prices than even the Medoc first growths. Château Petrus from Pomerol is the stellar example of fine Merlot. When the garagiste revolution occurred in Bordeaux in the 1990s, it was in Pomerol, using Merlot grapes, that the movement began.
Morley Safer’s 60 Minutes broadcast in 1991 exploring “The French Paradox” of why French people are so slim and healthy, even though they eat rich foods and drink lots of red wine, suggested that the key was Merlot. Following the broadcast, many Americans concluded, they could live longer, happier, slimmer, more elegant, and sexually-fulfilled lives by drinking lots of Merlot. Merlot enjoyed an immediate surge in popularity, and additional acreage was planted in many major wine-producing regions. Merlot has since become the major red wine grape in Washington State, where the long days of sunshine and the cool nights provide ideal growing conditions. Not coincidently, Washington State is just a couple degrees north of Bordeaux—the original home of Merlot.
Merlot is the F. Scott Fitzgerald of the wine world. Merlot was suddenly “discovered” and became all the rage in America during the final decade of the twentieth century, just as Fitzgerald, with the publication of This Side of Paradise, had became all the rage during the second decade. Because it was softer on the palette and matured far sooner, there was a widespread belief that Merlot would supplant Cabernet Sauvignon as the grape of choice for great red wines. Indeed, during the Merlot wine craze of the 1990s, many Californian vineyards were torn up and replanted exclusively with Merlot vines. Unfortunately, the vine did not live up to expectations, and by 2004, with the release of the movie Sideways, California had a surplus glut of Merlot vines.
The Booklovers' Guide to Wine Page 27