wine should be considered by its “holy trinity”:

1. The type of grape

2. Where the grapes were grown

3. How the grapes were turned into wine

The first is clearly a big deal.... Where the grapes are grown (fancily termed terroir) is also a big deal. The temperature and rain matters. Evidently you don’t want your grapes to get too big or the wine is watery crap. You also want grapes to struggle. Making the vines miserable seems to make the resulting grape and wine better. What’s in the soil? Is it limetone? Clay? Minerally? All this matters as well. Grapes grown on slopes in valleys are often the best because they have to work hard to get water and see the sun. There are some amazing anecdotes of workers shoveling the dirt in valleys back up the slopes of vinyards after rainstorms because that “terroir” is so valuable....

Finally, there are the post-picking steps that matter. Did the grape sit with the skins (red)? Did they age it in a barrel (which imparts flavor and tannins)? Was the barrel “toasted”? Was it a new barrel or an old one? Did they allow malolactic fermentation to occur (which changes malic acid to lactic acid, and gives Chardonnay its buttery flavor)? Did the wine sit “on the lees” which means resting with dead yeast and some grape solids?

#learnnewthings schedule:

January 2016 – Water and growth in California

February – Wine

March – Game theory

April – Cryptography

May – Art history

June – The history of railroads in the U.S.

July – Oceanography

August – Football (strategy and theory)

September – Chaos theory

November – Linguistics