RED WINE GRAPES WILLIAM STJOHN RED WINE GRAPES WILLIAM STJOHN

SYRAH SHIRAZ

Cool climate syrah smells, tastes, even feels different as a wine than that from warmer vineyard areas. And wine tasters, once they put them side by side (in place or memory), might well prefer one to the other precisely for these differences. Most of these differences are accounted for by how syrah ripens, a function of climate if ever there was one. Photo from Al Elmes on unsplash

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RED WINE GRAPES WILLIAM STJOHN RED WINE GRAPES WILLIAM STJOHN

CARMÉNÈRE

You may taste many things in a sip of red wine: a panoply of fruit flavors, earth or minerals, spicy wood, even the cleansing astringency of tannin. In a wine made from carménère, a red grape born in France but that has flowered of late in Chile, you also will taste mystery. Illustration of the Carmenère grape variety by Jules Troncy in the work "Ampelography,” 1901

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RED WINE GRAPES WILLIAM STJOHN RED WINE GRAPES WILLIAM STJOHN

OFFBEAT REDS

It’s a no-brainer that the combination of best value and highest quality in wine now comes from offbeat winemaking regions and their odd grapes. Here’s a too-short look at that combo in red wine, from the grape’s point of view.  

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