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Harvey was passionate about both Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel, and his new job gave him access to high quality material of both. Richard Peterson, and their combined creativity took wine in a new direction. He found himself working alongside winemaker Dr. Helena hired Scott Harvey to be winemaker and president. Where did modern red wine blends come from?īack in 1996, Folie à Deux Winery in St. Putting Zinfandel with Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, would be illegal. This is particularly true for the red wines of Bordeaux and the Rhône Valley, where only very specific grapes can be blended together. On the other hand, traditional red blends often stick to defined proportions and can be some of the most expensive wines in the world. They’re not necessarily made with the same percentage of specific grapes in the blend, or even the same grapes, from vintage to vintage, often relying on what’s least expensive - so lots of Merlot one year, but lots of Syrah the next. Traditional red blends often have centuries of tradition behind them, like the reds from Bordeaux and the Rhône, and the labels are as old-fashioned as wine labels get, often including a line illustration of the chateau.Īnd third, the new red blends are generally - but not always - cheap, sometimes costing less than $10. Second, they’re marketing driven, with clever names like Ménage à Trois and eye-catching labels like the 19 Crimes silhouettes. First, they’re sweet, where traditional red blends are dry, and they’re aimed at an audience where smooth is a key wine descriptor. “Today, they’re making red blends for the children and grandchildren of the immigrants, who grew up on soft drinks and expect wine to be sweet.”īecause today’s red blends have almost nothing in common with the traditional red blends that McAnulla describes.
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“When Robert Mondavi and the Gallos first made wine, they made it for immigrants who knew that red wine was dry,” she says. These two grape varietals also produced characterful wines on the coastal regions of South Africa this year.Natalie McAnulla, the assistant manager at HB Liquors Sheridan in suburban Denver, has a theory about why so many people are buying so many so-called red blends at her store.
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Similar claims are being made across the Chilean wine regions, where Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon had an especially good year. Also enjoying a fantastic year for weather were wineries across Argentina and Chile, with the Mendoza region claiming that 2012 will be one of their best vintages of the past decade. The southern hemisphere has seen ideal climatic conditions in most of the key wine producing countries, and Australia and New Zealand particularly had a superb year, in particular with the Bordeaux varietal grapes that grow there and which love the humidity these countries received plenty of. French wineries are claiming, though, that this could well turn out to be advantageous, as the slow ripening will allow the resulting wines to express more flavour and features of the terroir they are grown in. However, 2012 has been something of a late year for France, due to unpredictable weather throughout the summer, and the grapes were ripening considerably later than they did in 2011 (which was, admittedly, an exceptionally early year). While it may be a little too early to speak of the wines being made in the northern hemisphere, European and North American wineries have already begun reporting that their harvesting season has been generally very good, and are predicting to continue with the kind of successes they saw in 2011. 2012 has, so far been a positive year for wineries around the world.