Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [37]
It’s instantly empowering. Whether you are faced with a wall of Chardonnays (or Cabernets, or any other grape) at the wine shop, or a wine list that doesn’t offer any familiar names at a price you are prepared to pay, you can use the Flavor Map. It will help you confidently select a bottle based on your style preferences, your budget, your menu, or all three.
Perhaps even more important, you can also branch out without taking a big risk. In other words, regardless of which grape or style you are looking for, you no longer have to limit your choices to wines you already know.
Predicting the fruit flavors of regional and brand-name wines you haven’t tried before.
I introduced the Flavor Map in the context of varietal wines, such as Chardonnay, which list the grape on the label. But the Flavor Map works just as well for regionally named wines and brand-name wines (wines with a trademark or fantasy name rather than a grape or region). Take, for example a Mâcon-Viré (which is named for its growing region in Burgundy, France) and the brand-named wine Quintessa, from Napa Valley, California. Burgundy is a cool region, so you can look at the Flavor Map and predict that the Mâcon-Viré (made from the Chardonnay grape) will have an apple and pear style, and you will be correct. Napa Valley is a moderate-to-warm climate, which clues you in to the berries-and-plums style of Quintessa.
What if you are not familiar with the climate zone of a particular growing region? For most well-known wine regions, you can certainly follow your knowledge of geography and your intuition. For the others, refer to the Flavor Map, which shows all the major growing regions in each climate zone.
READING BETWEEN THE FRUIT LINES
Some back label wine notes describe the wine as having flavors of “black fruits.” This refers to the moderate-to-warm-zone fruit family of dark-skinned fruits such as dark berries (blackberries, blueberries, blackcurrants, black cherries), black plums, and figs. Similarly, some wines use the description “red fruits,” referring to the lighter, tart-flavored berries (cranberry, red cherry, redcurrant)—the cool-zone fruit family on our Flavor Map.
The Flavor Map and Climate
Before we get to tasting, I want to emphasize an important point about the Flavor Map. Once again, it takes you back to the label and, like the other buying tools and techniques we’ve explored, converts what’s there into style information that is easy to understand without a lot of memorization or technical knowledge. This is why the Flavor Map highlights what is obvious about growing regions: the climate zone of each, based mostly on latitude. As a rule, fine wine grapes grow successfully between the 30th and 50th parallels of latitude, north and south of the equator. Farther from the equator the weather is too cold, the grapes won’t fully ripen, and chances are the vines will freeze and die in winter. Too close to the equator and you’ve got tropical heat that keeps the vines from going dormant (perfect for your winter vacation getaway but not for grape vines). Vines need the winter rest period to build energy to grow the next year’s crop.
The aspect of climate that affects flavor most of all is the amount of warmth and sunshine during the growing season. And when it comes to these, there is more than latitude at work. One of the other major factors is weather, which is ever-changing.
A Change in the Weather
Some wines print a growing season weather report on the back label, but I think it usually means little to the buyer. The Flavor Map, however, works well year in and year out, because it reflects the average weather in each region. Vexing though they may be, the vagaries