Archive
Spotting Rare Grapes
It’s being a while since I talked about new additions to my “grape collection”. No, I didn’t stop looking for the new grapes (I think this will go on forever), I just couldn’t get around posting about the new grape discoveries.
Actually, one of the “pushers” for this post to come out was the fact that subject of Wine Century Club became very popular in my close “blogosphere”, the blogs I’m reading on more or less the regular basis. Oliver of The Wine Getter just crossed his first hundred grapes – here is the post where he explains what makes him going with the Wine Century Club. Here is account of another blogger, GourmetVicariously – she is undertaking the Wine Century Challenge in Australia, and you follow check on her progress here.
So for my own update, I finally submitted my Quattro application, and I’m inching little by little closer to the Pentavini status. As I didn’t post on this subject for a while, today’s update includes 22 grapes, a lot of them came through after the VinItaly and Gambero Rosso tastings I recently attended. Below you will see some pictures of the wine labels, and the names of the grapes and the wines follow right after. Another challenge for me will be to update my grapes of the world table, but I will worry about it later. This same table might be a good resource for you in terms of searching of the new wines and the grapes. Also, if you are using Pinterest, please make sure to check the Wine Centurions shared pinboard, and feel free to join in and start contributing the rare grapes information. Also, if we are talking about resources for the aspiring Wine Centurions, here is the link to all the Wine Century Club posts in this blog, hope you will find it helpful.
Here are the labels:
And the grapes:
Groslot – Sparkling Brut Rose Bouvet ‘Excellence’ NV Bouvet-Ladubay
Carricante – 2010 Planeta Carricante, Sicilia IGT, Italy
Le Crescent – Boyden Valley Winery Cowtipper, Vermont
Rougeon – Palaia Joyful Pink, Hudson Valley, New York
Prensal – 2010 Binigrau Nounat Vi de la Terra Mallorca, Spain
Marquette – 2010 Lincoln Park Vineyard Maquette, Vermont
Turbiana – 2009 Lugana Superiore Il Rintocco
Malvasia di Candia Aromatica – 2011 Lusenti C.P. Malvasia Frizzante Emiliana
Caberlot – 2009 Podere Il Carnasciale Caberlot
Trebbiano Spoletino – 2010 Tabarrini Adarmando
Verdiso – Bisol Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Brut Jeio NV
Cesanese di Affile – 2010 Casale della Ioria Cesanese del Piglio Camponovo
Malvasia Puntinata – 2011 L’Olivella Frascati Superiore Racemo
Bellone – L’Olivella Frascati Superiore Racemo
Cesanese – 2008 L’Olivella Lazio Rosso “>”
Durello – Lessini Durello DOC Spumante 36 Mesi
Lambrusca di Sorbara – 2011 Chiarli 1860 Lambrusco di Sorbara del Fondatore
Lambrusca Grasparossa – 2011 Chiarli 1860 Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro Vign. Enrico Cialdini
Ginestra – 2010 Marisa Cuomo Costa d’Amalfi Furore Bianco Fiorduva
Fenile – 2010 Marisa Cuomo Costa d’Amalfi Furore Bianco Fiorduva
Ripoli – 2010 Marisa Cuomo Costa d’Amalfi Furore Bianco Fiorduva
Perricone – 2010 Firriato Ribeca, Sicily
If you are not going through the Wine Century club challenge yet, you should really consider doing that, and if you are already living through your obsession – good luck in your journey and remember to have fun! Cheers!
Study of Grapes, 152 at a Time
How do you experience 152 grape varieties, all at the same time? Easy. You get a bottle of Giribaldi Cento Uve wine and … voilà!
As you probably know, I’m an enthusiastic member of the Wine Century Club – a virtual club dedicated to the grape adventures. I already talked too many times about virtues of the Wine Century Club, thus I’m not going to bore you with those details again. Instead, let me focus on only one, dare I say it, sacred bottle of wine – 2005 Giribaldi Cento Uve Langhe DOC.
What makes this wine “sacred”? It is made out of 50% Nebbiolo and the other 50% containing additional 151 (!) varieties, so it can really help you to advance in the quest for higher levels of The Wine Century Club membership (except that it doesn’t count towards the first level of membership with 100 varieties). The wine is almost impossible to find in US – except one wine shop in Colorado which actually carries it (if you are interested, the wine is available from The Vineyard Wine Shop, 303-355-8324). When I called the store to order this wine, gentleman who answered the phone, Matt, said that he is quite convinced that they don’t have any wine under such name – after checking his computer, he was surprised more than me by actually finding it. At $60 + $20 for the shipping, this was definitely worth the experience.
Interestingly enough, finding this wine and drinking it was the easiest part – the tough (seriously tough) part was figuring out what grapes I already tasted and what grapes I can actually add to my list. As this is one of the coolest parts of Wine Century Club membership ( figuring out what is what in the grape world), let me explain it with appropriate level of details.
To begin with, the web site for this wine states that it contains 152 varieties. The list of grapes is nowhere to be found on the winemaker’s web site. The only place on internet where you can find the list is at the Indian Wine Academy. Well, list is a list, you say, right? Yes, but not precisely. As I need to properly account for all the grapes I already tasted, I need to go through that list very carefully, line by line. As soon as I started going through the list, I noticed duplications (same grapes listed twice, like Gamay, for instance) – I called it a red flag and decided that the right thing to do is to contact Giribaldi, the winemaker. After 2 or 3 of my e-mails went unanswered, I decided that it is a time to … get an audience support? No, call a friend! And as I happened to have a good friend in Italy, Corrado, I asked him to help me to get to the correct list. This was not easy, but after a few conversations with the winery, he was able to get full description of the wine, including the list of grapes.
Yay? Nope. The list of grapes was … identical to the one published on the site of the Indian Wine Academy! Fine. From here on, I had to figure it out myself. I converted the list to the Excel file, and sorted it alphabetically. Then I had to figure out how to get from 156 varieties listed to the 152 which we know this wine has. It later downed on me that 156 varieties include Nebbiolo and 4 Nebbiolo clones , therefore if we will take all 5 Nebbiolo varieties from consideration we will get to the target number of 151. Whew. Tired of me yet? No? Let’s continue.
Next step was to remove obvious duplicates, then go through the list again. For every grape I didn’t know, I used Internet resources to verify that such a grape exists (i.e., referenced at least once on one or more sites). Here is the good list of references in case you ever need to conduct a search on grape etymology (Italian grapes, if you will):
After all the cleanup, removing duplicates, fixing the spelling and checking the references, I got to the final list of 138 grapes (don’t ask me where the 14 went – let’s keep it a grape mystery), out of which I was unable to find any references for the grape called Michele Pagliari – therefore I’m keeping it on the list, but not counting towards the new grapes. In case you want to see a transition here is an excel file for you – note that is has multiple spreadsheets inside starting from full list. Here is the list of those final 138 grapes.
Legend: letter N next to the grape stands for Nero (red), B is for Bianche (white), Rs is for Rose. Showing in Bold are the grapes which I count as new grapes for my grape count.
| Aglianico N | Michele Pagliari N |
| Albarola N | Montepulciano N |
| Albarossa N | Moscato bianco B |
| Aleatico N. | Moscato giallo B |
| Alicante Bouschet N | Moscato nero di Acqui N |
| Ancellotta N. | Moscato Rosa Rs |
| Arneis B | Muller Thurgau B |
| Avanà N | Nascetta B |
| Avarengo N | Nebbiolo N. |
| Baco Nero N | Nebbiolo ( Bolla) N |
| Barbera bianca B. | Nebbiolo ( Rosè) N |
| Barbera N. | Nebbiolo (Lampia) N |
| Becuet N. | Nebbiolo (Michet)N |
| Bianchetta Tevigiano B | Negrette N |
| Bianchetta Veronese B | Neretta cuneese N. |
| Bombino Bianco B | Neretto di Bairo N |
| Bombino Nero N | Nero Buono N |
| Bonarda Piemontese N | Nero d’Ala N |
| Bosco Nero N | Nero d’Avola N |
| Brachetto N. | Neyret N |
| Bracciola N | Pampanuto N |
| Brunello N | Pecorino N |
| Bussanello B | Pelaverga (di Pagno) N |
| Cabernet Franc N | Pelaverga N |
| Cabernet Sauvignon N | Pelaverga piccolo N |
| Canaiolo B. | Petit Arvine N |
| Canina N | Petit Verdot N |
| Cannonau N | Pigato B |
| Carica l’Asino N | Pignola Nera N |
| Carignano N | Pinot bianco B |
| Catarratto comune B | Pinot Grigio G |
| Catarratto Nero N | Pinot Nero N |
| Chardonnay B. | Plassa N |
| Chatus N | Pollera 1 N |
| Ciliegiolo N. | Portugieser N |
| Colorino Nero N | Primitivo N |
| Cornalin | Prosecco B |
| Cornarea N | Quagliano N |
| Cortese B | Raboso Veronese N |
| Corvina Nera N | Rebo Nero N |
| Croatina N | Refosco da Peduncolo Rosso N |
| Crovassa N | Riesling B |
| Dolcetto N | Riesling italico B |
| Doux d’Henry N | Riesling Renano B |
| Durasa N | Rossese bianco B |
| Durasca (Dolcetto di Boca) N | Rossese N |
| Enantio N | Ruché N |
| Erbaluce B | Sangiovese N |
| Favorita B | Sauvignon Blanc B |
| Franconia N (Blaufränkisch) | Schiava Gentile N |
| Freisa di Chieri N | Schiava grossa N |
| Freisa di Nizza N | Schiava N |
| Gamay N. | Sylvaner Verde B |
| Gargiulo N | Syrah N |
| Grechetto N | Teroldego Nero N |
| Grignolino N | Timorasso B |
| Grillo B | Tocai Friulano B |
| Incrocio Manzoni N | Tocai Rosso N |
| Lambrusca di Alessandria N | Torbato B |
| Lambrusco Maestri N | Traminer aromatico Rs |
| Lumassina N | Trebbiano Toscano B |
| Maiolica N | Uva di Troia N |
| Malvasia di Casorzo N | Uva rara N |
| Malvasia di Schierano N | Uvalino N |
| Malvasia Istriana N | Veltlimer Fruhrot N |
| Malvasia nera lunga N | Verduzzo Trevigiano B |
| Manzoni bianco B | Vermentino B |
| Marzemino N | Vespolina N |
| Merlot N | Zweigelt N |
Wines of United States
When you run a wine tasting, one of the great ways to keep people engaged all the time is to ask questions – trivia type and not. One of the simple warmup questions I like to ask the audience is “What do you think, how many states make the wine in the US? This sounds simple enough and goes into the “your guess is as good as mine” category. People usually start with some random number (trying to put sense into it, though), and sometime someone will say “all 50” – often just as a joke. Actually, it is the correct answer – for w while, all 50 states produce some wines.
So did you ever think of exploring and experiencing the wines of all 50 states? I’m sure you had California, Oregon, Washington and New York wines, but what about the other 46 states? Last week in Florida, I came across Lakeridge Winery Southern Red Premium Table Wine produced in Clermont, Florida. This wine allowed me to add one more grape to the grape count – Muscadin. And this wine prompted this blog post and the table which I would like to share with you, which lists my experiences with the grapes and wines of all United States to the date:
|
State |
Tasted Wine |
Visited Winery |
Comments |
| Alabama | |||
| Alaska | |||
| Arizona |
Y |
||
| Arkansas | |||
| California |
Y |
Y |
|
| Colorado | |||
| Connecticut |
Y |
||
| Delaware | |||
| Florida |
Y |
||
| Georgia | |||
| Hawaii |
Y |
Pineapple wine | |
| Idaho | |||
| Illinois | |||
| Indiana | |||
| Iowa | |||
| Kansas | |||
| Kentucky | |||
| Louisiana | |||
| Maine |
Y |
Y |
|
| Maryland | |||
| Massachusetts |
Y |
Y |
Truro Vineyards, Nashoba Winery |
| Michigan | |||
| Minnesota | |||
| Mississippi | |||
| Missouri | |||
| Montana | |||
| Nebraska | |||
| Nevada | |||
| New Hampshire | |||
| New Jersey |
Y |
||
| New Mexico |
Y |
||
| New York |
Y |
Y |
Fingerlakes, LI, Hudson |
| North Carolina | |||
| North Dakota | |||
| Ohio | |||
| Oklahoma | |||
| Oregon |
Y |
||
| Pennsylvania |
Y |
Y |
Chaddsford |
| Rhode Island | |||
| South Carolina | |||
| South Dakota | |||
| Tennessee | |||
| Texas |
Y |
||
| Utah | |||
| Vermont | |||
| Virginia |
Y |
Y |
Chrysalis, Williamsburg Winery |
| Washington |
Y |
||
| West Virginia | |||
| Wisconsin | |||
| Wyoming |
What is your experience with wines from 50 states? Can you count and share? It is definitely a fun exercise and might bring back some good memories while you are at it. Happy counting! Cheers!
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