Knowing Your Grapes: Part 2

Wednesdays on the BottleBlog will feature an education session on wine, beer or spirits. Today Shannon Spare shares her experiences as a beginner in the World of Wine.

Did you know... that there are SO MANY different kinds of wine grapes in the world that, if you drank one wine made with a different variety of grape every single day, it would take you over 27 years to taste them all? Last week I talked about the major grapes that make up white wine. Today's post is all about the red stuff! With these red grapes, as with the whites, there are many more types than I discuss, and countless blends, but these are some of the most popular.

Cabernet Sauvignon: Not to be confused with Canterbury Tales, which is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century (a wonderful read), the Cabernet Sauvignon grape is a variety that thrives in all warm parts of the world. It's a rather tannic* grape, so it's often blended with more mild grape varieties to cut down on the harshness. Cabernets are versatile and, in a general sense, the less expensive cabs tend to be fruitier and more medium bodied, while their more expensive counterparts are rich and full-bodied*.

Merlot: Straight out of Wine for Dummies, the Merlot grape has "deep color, full body, high alcohol, and low tannin." If you've ever seen the movie Sideways, Merlots are for some reason joked about frequently in the wine world, but they're really a delicious wine with a lot of potential. Because of the low tannins, they're easily blended with other varieties and help balance things out. By itself, it's a simple wine that's easy to drink.

Pinot Noir: Most often found in pure form rather than blended with other grapes, Pinot Noir generally produces a strong wine that's high in acid, but low in tannin. However, depending on if it's been aged in oak barrels, that can raise the tannin level and cause the wine to have a more woodsy/earthy taste to it, rather than fruity.


Shiraz: Shiraz is a confusing one. French wines made from Shiraz (or Syrah) grapes tend to be fuller-bodied and have a lot of tannins. They also tend to have very strong, and sometimes strange aromas like tar or burnt rubber. However, Australian Shiraz wines are quite different, with a medium body, and very fruity. I think it's fascinating how the same grape can yield such vastly different wines when grown in different climates.

Zinfandel: Zinfandel grapes product a wine that is very dark and very rich, and contain medium to high tannins. A very aromatic wine, Zinfandels tend to have a berry or jammy scent to them.




As I've said, I'm not a fan, personally, of a high-tannin wine. I prefer wines that are lighter-bodied, as well. I think on my shopping trip this week I'm going to pick up a few varieties of Merlot and Pinot Noir to see how they suit my taste. Since my last entry on white grapes, I've been on a bit of a "white kick," so it'll be a nice change for me to switch back to a deeper red.

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*What's all this talk of "tannins" and "body?" They confused me at first, so I thought I'd take a paragraph to explain each of them the way I understand them:

Body is how the wine feels in your mouth. Is the texture like water? Or heavier, like cough syrup? Full-bodied wines tend to feel thicker in the mouth, while light-bodied wines are thinner. Kind of like the difference between skim milk and a heavy cream.

Tannins are, basically, the level of bitterness in the wine. "Astringent" is another term used to describe tannins. If you've ever bitten into a grape seed or a banana peel and have tasted that weird, almost tongue-numbing flavor, that's what a tannin is. An interesting thing about tannins is that a wine needs them to age. So a fruiter wine with less tannins has to be consumed fairly quickly, while a wine that is very tannic can age for many years, and as it ages, the tannins become less noticeable in the taste of the wine.