Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [38]
In a cool year, less warmth and fewer hours of sunshine mean the grapes do not ripen as thoroughly. In slightly cool years, the wines’ fruit style edges toward those flavors of the cooler climate zones. So, for example, the fruit flavor of Australian Chardonnay in a cool year might taste less tropical and more applelike. In extremely cool years, the grapes in some regions may not ever reach sufficient ripeness to make quality wine-in plain English, “a bad vintage.”
In a warm year, the corollary is obvious. Warm-weather years will yield fruit flavors that edge toward the exotic flavors of the warmer climate zones. French red Burgundy is a great example of this. In the warmest years, the wines taste of ripe raspberries and black cherries instead of the leaner, tart, cool red berry flavors (cranberry, redcurrant, and sour cherry) of average years. In general, wine drinkers tend to love exotic fruit flavors. This means that quite often, a warm year and “a good year” (or a great one) are considered synonymous.
Microclimate
Besides latitude and weather, there’s also “microclimate,” which the Flavor Map accounts for in simple terms. Microclimate simply refers to the growing conditions in a particular spot. Interestingly, the conditions even in vineyards that are quite close to one another can vary a lot. Have you ever visited a seaside town and found yourself cool or comfortable near the shoreline, but sweltering on the town square just a short distance inland?
Similarly, many wine regions have pockets or subsections where the microclimate differs quite a bit from the overall climate in the region. On the detailed Flavor Maps I have shown you the major ones. They are noted as Warm Spots and Cool Spots, which signals that they are warmer or cooler than average for their climate zone, and thus clues you in to how their fruit-flavor styles differ from the norm. There are quite a few causes for microclimate variations, but the two major ones—bodies of water and altitude differences—are very easy to understand.
BODIES OF WATER If you think of my seaside town example, then the significance of a nearby body of water is logical. Specifically, bodies of water temper climate extremes—cooling down hot spots and warming up cool spots, as in the famous wine regions, Germany and California.
Germany’s great wine regions (Rhine, Mosel, Nahe, etc.) are all named for the rivers flowing through them. The rivers reflect the sun’s light and heat onto the vines clustered on their banks, and they also maintain airflow, which helps reduce the risk of frost late in the growing season. In fact, without her rivers, most of Germany would just be too cold to grow wine grapes at all. This explains why most people rightly think of Germany as a beer country—where it is too cold for grapes, they grow and brew grain.
Many people think of California as a warm place—understandably. But its top wine regions all share one thing in common: They hug the coastline, where cool ocean breezes temper the heat. This is why all the famous regions—from Napa and Sonoma in the north to Santa Barbara in the south—share a moderate climate zone, sprinkled here and there with a few hot spots that are blocked from the ocean’s influence, usually by mountains. Farther inland is the Central Valley, the source of jug wines and basic “California” bottlings, and one big warm spot. On the label, it is increasingly common for California wineries to make reference to cooler-climate vineyards, to emphasize their use of grape sources that are considered to be of higher quality than those in the hot Central Valley.
THE COASTAL DIFFERENCE You see the word coastal prominently displayed on a broad array of California wines. Some famous wineries like BV (Beaulieu Vineyard) have developed entire “Coastal” product lines. The reasons are both viticultural and traditional. In terms of wine production, California’s moderate and cooler coastal zones are considered to produce better-quality