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Wine Expert
Michael De Loach
Wine 101:
What Are the Basic
Kinds
of Wines?
Or: How Did the Wine World
Get So Complicated Over
So Simple a Thing?
Newsflash: most of the wines all “the experts” care about are made from fewer than ten grape varieties. Shocked? Perhaps, but not if you read here regularly. The problem is that wine regulations, winemakers, labeling laws and “the experts” themselves have somehow managed to turn eight simple varieties of grapes into an impenetrable, intimidating, impossibly complicated system that (according to them, of course) can only be understood after years of “wine education.” Or at least the purchase of a few books.
Below, the simple path to wine enlightenment. And by enlightenment, I mean lightening up your wine burden.
THE LIST:
You needn’t memorize it. However, as a reference, here it is: common wine grapes in order of the most used and sold in the world. The first name is the actual grape, the second (in parentheses) is the region in Europe (or elsewhere) most often associated with that grape. More on why European wines are labeled by region instead of by grape in a moment…
Cabernet Sauvignon (the main grape used in the region and the wine called Bordeaux, in France)
Merlot (Bordeaux, again)
Pinot Noir (Burgundy, France)
Sangiovese (Chianti, Italy)
Chardonnay (Burgundy, again, only this time white)
Sauvignon Blanc (Bordeaux, for a third time, only this time white—plus, there’s a dry AND a sweet version)
Pinot Grigio (now used all over Italy, but originally the Aldo Adige region)
Syrah (Rhone, France, also called Shiraz in Australia, and now in other countries)
That’s it. Only eight things you need know for now. There are a bunch of other grapes that wine geeks would like to add here, but The List covers about 95% of the wines commonly consumed.
So why all the messiness? Well, there are two primary problems: 1) the way wines have been labeled and 2) the wine trade (see geeks, above), which wants to promote the other 100+ wine varietals that are produced in the world. But the largest problem is the first, so we’ll concentrate there.
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