The average number of grapes it takes to produce a bottle of wine: 600.
Wine has so many organic chemical compounds it is considered more complex than blood serum.
The first commercial U.S. winery, established in 1823, was located in Missouri.
The corkscrew was invented in 1860.
Robert Mondavi started the Mondavi winery at the age of 52.
Napa Valley recently surpassed Disneyland as California's No. 1 tourist destination with 5.5 million visitors a year.
What is the difference between a variety and a varietal? The term variety is used to describe a type of grape. A wine made from that grape is referred to as a varietal (e.g. Pinot Noir).
What is the difference between a single varietal and a blend? Referring to a single varietal means the name of the wine listed on the wine label. Although that wine may have up to 25% of another varietal or varietals, it is still considered a single varietal. A blend is a mixture of two or more wines blended together; generally no varietal is more than 74%, keeping the winery from using the varietal name on the bottle.
Screw-top bottles are not as “good” as corked bottles.
They are certainly less romantic, but numerous tests have proved that they are far more effective and eliminate the risk of corkiness. You can always tell a corked wine by smelling the cork. Sometimes a musty-smelling cork will warn you that a wine is faulty; quite often, however, the cork may show no signs of deterioration at all. The sure way to tell a corked wine from a dirty, or otherwise faulty, one is that it will actually smell and taste worse the longer it is in the glass.
All wines improve with age.
This is a belief still common in the countries of southern and eastern Europe and South America, where older wines are thought to be better by definition and people have become used to drinking wine with the taste of oxidation – the sherry-like character of wines that are past their best. Most modern wine-drinkers now prefer wines with fresher, fruitier flavours. Almost all inexpensive white wines should be drunk within a couple of years (at most) of the harvest, and even Bordeaux may need drinking young in vintage.
All red wines improve with decanting.
Some do benefit from the airing they get by being poured from a bottle into a decanter, but less full-bodied wines – such as red burgundy – can lose some of their fruit by being manhandled in this way. As a general rule, the only wines that need to be decanted are the ones that have a heavy deposit – all vintage port, most mature red Bordeaux, old Rhones, Barolos, Australian and Californian reds, for example.
A hot summer means a good vintage.
A cold, rainy summer and autumn will usually make for a bad year, but a hot month of August will not necessarily indicate a good one. Vintages depend on the weather being “right” at various phases of a grape’s development, from the spring to the autumn. A late storm at the end of September can spoil what, at the beginning of that month, seemed set to be a great vintage.
Great wines are never blends; they always come from specific vineyards.
What about Champagne like Krug and vintage port, both of which are almost always blends? And what about Grange, the Australian red which has, since its creation in the 1950s, always been a blend from several regions of South Australia?
Cheap wines don’t travel.
Some don’t – but then again, nor do some frail, old, expensive ones. In the case of young, cheap wine, everything depends on the way it has been produced. Well-made wine, whatever its price, should have no difficulty in being carried from one side of the world to the other. When a wine you enjoyed on holiday and brought back with you doesn’t taste quite the same at home, it’s very likely to be because the circumstances have changed, not the wine.
Great wine can never be made in stainless steel tanks.
Some of the best chateaux in Bordeaux ferment their wine in stainless steel nowadays – and make better wine than ever. The word “chateau” indicates quality. Any wine estate in France can call its building a chateau (even if it is little smarter than a garden hut) and, in Bordeaux, almost every estate will do so. To complicate matters still further, some co-operatives use a loophole in the rules to put “chateau” labels on wines they make.
Red Bordeaux is made from the Cabernet Sauvignon.
Well, quite a lot of it is – but actually, the Merlot is the most widely planted grape in Bordeaux. And in the communes of St. Emilion and Pomerol, the blend is often just Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
“Legs” are the sign of a better wine.
What the French call the “legs” – and what the Germans call “cathedral windows” – are the streams that flow down the glass once you have swirled the wine around. These are often thought to mean that the wine is especially good. All they really indicate is that the wine is rich in glycerine and was thus made from ripe grapes. Even ripe grapes can be turned into bad wine.
