Let Me Tell You About Wine

The best wines usually come from the Mosel (lighter, tangier, slatier wines); the Rheingau (weightier, riper); the Rheinhessen (softer, and with only a small proportion of its vineyards dedicated to good quality); and the Pfalz (big ripe wines, often from Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and others as well as Riesling). Baden wines, white or red, should be good – the Pinot family is more important here than Riesling – and Franken has impressive dry Silvaner, Riesling and Müller-Thurgau.

Grapes Riesling makes the best wines, in a tangy though not green style; Scheurebe is fragrant and grapefruity; Pinot Blanc (or Weissburgunder) is less tangy and more nutty; Pinot Gris (Grauburgunder or Ruländer) is honeyed and smoky; Silvaner is dry and neutral. Traminer (Gewürztraminer) is floral. Müller-Thurgau is generally undistinguished. The best red is Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder).
Local jargon Trocken – dry. Halbtrocken – off-dry. Sekt – sparkling wine. VDP – an organization of quality wine estates.

South Australia
Location High-quality wines come from Barossa, Eden and Clare Valleys, Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra and Limestone Coast. There are plenty of exciting new regions, especially along the coast in the Limestone Coast zone. Riverland is the bulk-wine region.

Grapes Most sherry is made from Palomino, which makes incredibly boring unfortified wine. But turned into sherry it’s fabulous. The other grape (and the main one in Montilla) is Pedro Ximénez (or PX), which makes wonderfully grapy sweet sherry.

Local jargon Dulce – sweet. Muy dulce – very sweet. Muy viejo – very old. Seco – dry. Almacenista – small-scale producer with just a few barrels of high-quality sherry. The company of Emilio Lustau makes a speciality of bottling these.

Madeira is classified quite differently. Here levels of sweetness are the key. Sercial is the lightest and driest; Verdelho is slightly weightier and off-dry. Bual is fairly sweet and rich, and Malmsey is very sweet. All get their pungent, smoky tang from they way they are aged, sometimes being artificially heated, sometimes just stored very warm, so that the wine gently oxidizes. It’s not a flavour you’d welcome in other wines, but in Madeira it’s essential.

Port styles are basically divided between vintage and non-vintage. Vintage port comes from a single harvest, and only in the best years do the producers ‘declare’ a vintage. The wines are bottled after two years and should be matured in bottle for ten or 15 years before being opened. Single-quinta vintage ports are a variation on this theme: they come from the best estate owned by the producer, but are made in the second-best years. They are ready to drink at about ten years old. LBV, or Late-Bottled Vintage, is rather different. Yes, it’s wine from a single year, but bottled after four to six years. ‘Traditional’ unfiltered LBV is a lovely, perfumed drink that can be enjoyed as soon as you buy it, or kept.
Crusted is a non-vintage blend that is usually an excellent budget substitute for vintage port; vintage character is mostly undistinguished. Tawny is the most wonderful of the non-vintage styles. 10-Year-Old tawny is russet-coloured, sweet and fruity; 20-Year-Old is nuttier and smoother; and 40-Year-Old is very nutty, smooth and rare. Ruby is the simplest and youngest of ports, and at its best is bursting with young, peppery fruit. Reserve is a slightly older Ruby. White port should be dry and nutty but most is coarse and alcoholic.

Local jargon Quinta – estate. 5/10/20/40-Year-Old – Age statements refer to the average age of the wine in the blend, not to any particular vintage. The age is an indicator of style for tawny port. Only buy Madeira with an age statement, preferably 10-Year-Old, or you won’t get the full character.

Quinta de Azevedo Vinho Verde

Planeta Santa Cecilia