Types of Wine - Dry Red Wine
In dealing with the types of wine that are made today, we will stay
within the definition of previous sectoin and be concerned only with wines made
from the juice of grapes, extending this to include distilled wine
(brandy), fortified wines (naturally fermented grape juice to which
ethyl alcohol or grape spirit has been added), sparkling wines made
either by the old bottle fermentation process or by bulk pressure
fermentation, and of course, the natural, completely fermented out dry
white, red and rose wines.
Let us deal with the last of these first—the dry wines. They are
basically classified by their appearance, that is to say, by their
color. They are dry reds, dry whites, or roses.
Dry Reds
TheAustralian vignerons who first planted the vine and made wines in
this country were of European origin, trained to and familiar with the
wines of Europe. It is not surprising that they should have compared, or
contrasted, their products with those they knew so well in their
homelands. Nor is it surprising that they should have called their wines
by the class names of the European wines. Many Australian winegrowers
and merchants today still follow this practice to some degree, calling
their dry reds clarets or burgundies, although the custom is growing to
dispense with these descriptions, substituting place names for the
traditional French names of the two famous districts.
No Australian red wine is a burgundy or a claret. These can be only the
wines grown, and sometimes bottled, in the Burgundy or Bordeaux
districts of France. But if you wish to make the traditional distinction
when you ask your wine merchant for a dry red, what you will get for a
burgundy will be a wine, usually in a short, tapered neck bottle, that
is somewhat softer and fruitier than the rather drier, more delicate
flavored, more austere wine he will supply if you ask for a claret. The
claret probably will be in the short, higher shouldered bottle. One very
large Australian winegrower makes a standard practice of using the one
style of bottle, or the other, to indicate the style of wine he has put
into it. The same winegrower has done more than most to dispense with
the misleading French style descriptions by substituting either local
place names, or by simply labelling his wines with a bin number and the
names of the grape varieties from which they are made. Thus, a wine in a
sloping shouldered bottle, labelled "Bin No. 279, a blend of Shiraz and
Mataro grapes", will be a full bodied, deep red wine, with plenty of
flavor, and will prove an excellent accompaniment to the beef and the
cheese that follows it. But if you happened to select a wine which this
winemaker has put into a high shouldered bottle, you will find this wine
somewhat harder on the palate, without the full roundness of the former
wine, but of strong bouquet and stringent tannin "finish". Doubtless you
will select this wine to accompany the roast pork, rightly believing
that the richness of the meat needs the foil of the more austere wine.
As the wine industry in Australia develops, and it is developing today
very fast to catch up with the demand for well matured dry table wines,
the old style of typifying the wines by French or Spanish descriptive
names may disappear. In its place we are likely, one hopes, to find
local names and the names of grape varieties used to label our wines. In
buying the wines of some makers, even today, it is necessary to know the
varietal names in order to know what to expect of the wine in the
bottle, for there has always been confusion between the description
terms claret and burgundy. No confusion at all arises when the names are
applied to the wines to which they properly belong, those of Burgundy
and Bordeaux.
|
