CHOICES This section lists the fundamental options and decisions facing a winemaker and his or her team that determine the style, taste, and flavor of the wine. Many of these choices are addressed as comparative scenarios, such as the use of oak or no oak, blended or 100 percent pure varietal, or barrel rather than stainless-steel fermentation. For sparkling wines and dessert wines, I also explain how these types of wines may be vinified. Definitions of the more technical and specialized terms used in these descriptions are provided in the glossary at the back of the book.
As this is not a encyclopedic wine book but one about matching food with wine, I don't go into detail about most aspects of wine production. For example, long before the grapes are harvested, vineyard decisions must be made about trellising, irrigation, root-stock selection, leaf picking, and other basic viticultural practices. For more detail on these matters, you may want to consult comprehensive wine books such as Tom Stevenson's Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia or Jancis Robinson's Oxford Companion to Wine. These books offer excellent discussions of the wine-making process and preproduction vineyard practices.
FLAVOR LEXICON Although the flavors elicited from a wine are quite subjective, there is an accepted working vocabulary for describing grapes and their resultant wines. In this section I try to provide some of the most common flavor descriptors associated with a particular varietal or style. These listings are by no means exhaustive, and you may find yourself developing and inventing your own words to describe the wines. That's not only OK; it's encouraged and applauded.
WINE AND FOOD PAIRING The final component of the journeys addresses real-life scenarios at home or in a restaurant. While I do offer my own point of view and attempt to “get into your mouth,” the truism still holds: nobody experiences aroma and taste in the same way as anybody else. As each person's threshold for saltiness, bitterness, heat or spice, sweetness, and tartness is different, so too are the perceptions of how these factors react with wine and food on individual palates.
Each of the varietal chapters concludes with four tasty, easy-to-make recipes that have been designed specifically to go with different stylistic versions of the grape. For sparkling wine, I provide four recipes to accompany different styles of sparkling wine and Champagne, and the dessert wine chapter includes six recipes. Each recipe is followed by Joyce's discussion of the dish and my rationale for the pairing.
RECOMMENDED PRODUCERS Following each recipe, where the information is germane, is a short list of reliable producers whose wines are consistently made in the relevant style. I have purposely avoided specifying a particular vintage, vineyard, or bottling, because the availability of many wines varies radically in different areas of the country—and from year to year. Instead of listing specific prices, which are also highly variable, I give three price ranges, as shown below.
| Everyday | $5-15 |
| Premium | $16-39 |
| Splurge | $40 and up |
In a few cases, no producers make wines in a certain price category, and so no recommendations are made for that category. For example, there are no “splurge” white Zinfandels.
I have tried to select producers with reasonably comprehensive distribution who produce sufficient quantities of wine. Nothing is more frustrating than falling in love with a wine and then finding out that only ten cases were produced, and those were sold exclusively to those who live in the right places and know the secret handshake.
part one
A SPARKLING WINE JOURNEY
SPARKLING WINES
Champagne and other types of sparkling wine, which make up the bubbly category, are different from varietals: in addition to being effervescent, these wines are almost always blends rather than single-grape (varietal) bottlings. And they are fantastic with food! But unfortunately, most of us reserve our enjoyment of these bubblies for celebrations or drink them like cocktails, without food. We should consider these sparklers more frequently, because they have an amazing affinity for many dishes.
Where do the bubbles come from? When grape juice is fermented into wine, the yeast organisms convert sugar into alcohol. In the process, carbon dioxide gas is released. In the making of still wines, this gas is allowed to dissipate into the air. In sparkling wines, it is retained. To make Champagne and Champagne-style wines, still wine is placed into a bottle with a small amount of sugar and live yeast. The carbon dioxide produced from this second fermentation is trapped in the bottle as effervescence. In other styles of sparkling wine, the carbon dioxide is trapped at other stages, using different processes.
WINE-GROWING AREAS
Most people believe that all sparkling wines are Champagne. This belief is true only to the extent that the region of Champagne, in northeastern France, is universally revered as the spiritual home of bubblies. It is the birthplace of the “Champagne method” (the méthode champenoise, pronounced “me-tud cham-pen-woz”)—the production process by which a secondary fermentation is induced in the same bottle in which the still wine is bottled after blending. The result is a sparkling wine of complexity and great elegance.
You can say that all Champagne is sparkling wine (virtually all of it is), but you cannot say that all sparkling wine is Champagne. In order to be labeled as such, it must come from this prestigious appellation.* In other parts of France, sparkling wines are produced using the same method (identified on the label as the méthode traditionnelle). However, these producers often use different grapes, and the wines don't have Champagne's uniquely layered character of toasted brioche, hazelnuts, tart citrus, and chalky earth, rooted in the holy trinity of Champenois grapes from which the wines are produced: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and the indigenous Pinot Meunier. Many of the other French sparkling wines, labeled as Crémant (for example, Crémant de la Loire, Crémant d'Alsace), are nevertheless excellent. The Cava appellation in the Catalonia region of Spain produces more méthode traditionnelle wine than any other country in the world; it bears the eponymous name of Cava. More rustic, uniquely savory, and with flavors of mineral, spice, and earth, Cava makes use of the indigenous Spanish grapes of Xarel-lo, Viura, and Parellada and is always a great value. Italy's sparkling wine industry is based in the northwestern region of Piedmont surrounding the town of Asti; its Muscat-based wine is known as Asti Spumante (spumante simply means “sparkling” in Italian). Asti Spumante is almost always sweeter than other sparkling wines and redolent of the flavors of white Muscat grapes: lychee, apricot, and ripe tangerine. It is also based on a different method of production, by which the wine achieves its effervescence within a pressurized, closed tank: this is the cuve close, Charmat, or bulk process, which preserves all the fresh, primary fruit flavors. A slightly less bubbly relative, Moscato d'Asti, has a similar flavor profile but less prickle on the tongue and makes for enjoyable summer al fresco dining. Italy's other celebrated sparkling wine is Prosecco. Made from the eponymous grape and produced primarily in Veneto but also in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige regions, Prosecco utilizes the same bulk method as Asti Spumante, but produces a wine slightly drier to the tongue, with earthy nuances and more apple and pear notes.
Other countries and regions around the world make sparkling wines using the méthode traditionnelle with excellent results: the United States (with California leading the charge), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South America, the rest of Italy (primarily Lombardy's Franciacorta region), and less obvious places like Portugal (which also utilizes the continuous method, described below) and even
