Pursuing Wine Appreciation, Part2

In my previous post I described various roadmap markers encountered while travelling the circuitous and open-ended road of Wine Appreciation.   The starting point was understanding a wine’s primary structural aspects, its building blocks, (acidity, sweetness, alcohol and tannins), and how those, in turn, are determined by the underlying grapes from which it is made. This was crucial inasmuch as American and most New World wines are primarily labelled and distinguished by the underlying grape. But that information was of limited assistance when I tried to understand how European wines identified and differentiated themselves between countries, as well as between regions of the same country.   My next offramp took me to the notion of Appellation: where a wine is produced, its birthplace, its unique origins. Appellation is a promise of authenticity.   You’re getting The Real Thing , not a knockoff.   (Involved enthusiasts are also familiar with the underlying grapes, b

by noreply@blogger.com (tom) · source ↗