What? There's alcohol? Yep, because otherwise you have grape juice. In the olden days, let's say three decades ago or longer, the only thought given to alcohol was whether a European wine had enough because some years the fruit just didn't fully ripen.
In the premium wine world, dessert wines and fortified wines are expected to be sweet. A few others, like Riesling and sparkling, can have various amounts of sweetness. The vast majority of table wines are meant to be dry with no discernible sweetness, but that's not always the case.
Black teas have lots of tannins, and you feel it drying out your mouth when you drink it. Other foods, like all other teas, coffee, and nuts have tannins, though not the mouth-drying sensation of black tea. So our perception of tannins is a sensation and a feel, not a smell or taste.
The easiest way to show acidity is to bite into a lemon. There's acidity! It's bright, it's refreshing, it's tart, it makes your mouth water and sometimes even your eyes. Ever try to make lemonade without sugar? Whoa, that will make you pucker. You want to get just the right amount of sweetness in your lemonade to balance the effects of the acid, but to not drown it out. Hmm, might some wines do the same thing? Some of the higher acid white wines, like Riesling, do this.
Suffer from acid reflux? Maybe keep to the lower acid wines.
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| Top-selling French premium wine in U.S. |
In 1784 Thomas Jefferson, a Madeira and Port drinker, went to France. He came home a fan of Bordeaux and Burgundy. Part of this was probably political, as he switched from what the British drank to a buyer of wines from America's new ally.
France's largest exports in value are aerospace products. Number two is wine exports that were over $18b in 2022. This was up substantially from the two previous years, driven by inflation. More than one-forth of French wine and spirits exports are to the U.S.
The American market is huge. The French were the top wine consumers "forever" until about ten years ago, when the U.S. forged ahead as the largest wine consuming nation. France is still in the lead on the amount consumed per person. Wine consumption in France has been dropping for a number of years.
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| French exports in 2021 -- from Statista Click on image to enlarge |
At one time, only a handful of Sonoma County wineries required reservations for tasting. With the pandemic, almost everyone in Sonoma and Napa went to reservations as a means of crowd control and safety. Many have stayed that way.
This is an annual judging of wines entered from the North Coast grape growing area of California. This included the counties of Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Lake, Marin, and Solano. Yes, some of these are better known than others, but all are making premium commercial wines.
Will the heavy rains and floods that went on from Christmas well into March harm the 2023 wine grape crop? Nope.
