Everyone has a go-to wine. You know the flavors, the price, the alcohol level — it’s the bottle you choose for a good night, with no surprises. But a lot of people stop there, which means they are denying themselves a literal world of possibilities.
Wine feels complicated, and that makes branching out scary. If you’re going to a party and the host likes pinot noir, you go to the Rouses wine section and discover Rouses has pinot noirs from five continents. Where do you even begin?
“The same grape, grown in completely different places, is going to taste different,” says Meredith Ball, the category manager for wine & spirits at Rouses Markets. “As you explore them, though, you’ll find a lot of subtleties they have in common — and that’s where wine gets really fun.”
The characteristics of any given wine come from the climate where its grapes are grown, the soil that they’re grown in, and the techniques winemakers use to turn them into wine. “There are a lot of different philosophies in the vineyard and in the winery,” Ball says. “The little decisions growers and winemakers make along the way all add up to big differences in the bottle.”
First, a few basics. Grapes are no different than any other crop that farmers grow. In the same way that rice does well in Louisiana, but badly in other places, grapes grow best in certain regions of certain countries. And just like any other crop, there are different types of grape, each suited to specific climates, weather systems, soil types and elevation.
Grape varieties spread around the world based on what different regions have in common — which gives a wine beginner an easy way to begin exploring.
Ball, a 15-year veteran of the wine industry, moved to Louisiana from Oregon a few years ago. “I spent a lot of my life in the Willamette Valley there,” she says. Take a globe and trace the latitude of the Willamette Valley around the planet and you’ll find a surprise when you get to Europe.
“It is on almost the same parallel as Burgundy, in France, which is famous for its pinot noirs and chardonnays. So it makes a lot of sense that the grape varietals of Burgundy would grow really well in Oregon — and they do.” Both regions get rain in the fall and frost in the spring, and winters come early in both places. Those are things that pinot noir and chardonnay grapes absolutely love.
If there is a particular wine that you like — say, a cabernet sauvignon from Napa Valley — while you’re in the wine section, google where the grape originates from, Ball says. “If you’re used to drinking big California cabernets, you’ll discover that the cabernet sauvignon grape came from the Bordeaux region of France. Maybe try a bottle of that — you’ll find a lot of similarities, but they won’t be identical.”
Every bottle of wine is a time capsule of the soil, sunlight, rainfall and temperature of a specific place at a specific moment in its history. It’s one reason why wine people talk so much about good vintages and bad vintages. (A vintage is the year the grapes were harvested.) Each variable affects the grape in some way, which affects the wine that’s made from it. The same place, at different times, can give vastly different results.
Now think about the soil of the Old World (European wines, primarily), versus the New World (which includes the Americas, Australia and South Africa). Winemakers have been tilling and irrigating the soil, growing grapes and making wine in Burgundy for nearly 2,000 years. As a significant endeavor, they’ve only been doing that in Oregon since the 1960s. That alone will guarantee that Oregon’s wines will have a unique taste. It’s like cooking with a seasoned skillet grandma used her whole life versus one you just got from the store. The same dish will come out different.
Wine isn’t special in this regard. The next time you travel to another country, buy a can of Coca-Cola. You will find it both tastes the same as a Coke back home, and also tastes weirdly different. It’s because Coke uses local ingredients — local water, local agriculture, local regulations. It’s the same reason that French bread from New Orleans tastes and feels different than anywhere else in the world — it’s our local water and humidity.
And you don’t even have to travel far to get two very different wine experiences from the same grape. For example, Napa Valley cabernet sauvignons are very popular. But some Rouses shoppers prefer the same wine from Paso Robles. The same variety of grape, the same state. Those 250 miles make a big difference, though. Paso Robles has hotter summers, cooler winters and less rain. This gives its cabernets a bolder blackberry and dark cherry character, with higher alcohol levels and softer tannins. Sometimes, when someone says they don’t like a particular type of wine, what they really mean is they don’t like a type of wine from a certain place. See where else it is grown, and give it a try.
It makes sense that different places will yield wines that taste different. But why don’t two wines from the same region taste identical? Why does Veuve Clicquot taste so different from Moet and Chandon Imperial? They use the same grapes, both grown in the Champagne region of France.
The answer is the winemaker. After growers harvest their grapes and bring them to the winery, winemakers have to make a lot of decisions that will affect everything from the color of the wine to its flavor. Humans have been making wine for 8,000 years. We’ve found a lot of ways to do it, each imparting some unique flair or effect. Aging a wine in an old oak barrel versus a new oak barrel will yield very different profiles, for example. And winemakers often endeavor to represent a “house style” — a new bottle of Veuve Clicquot today should taste the same as a new bottle did a hundred years ago — or express the soil and climate of the region (the “terrior”) and the natural characteristics of the grape.
It’s not just what the Earth and the winemaker do to a wine, however. There’s also what you do to it. For example: Do you drink it with food?
Because the French and Italians were making wines centuries before the New World was even discovered, their wines evolved with their cuisine, and vice versa. The one brings out the best of the other.
“Some of the wines we carry are great for drinking on their own,” Ball explains. The Rouses Recommends program can help shoppers figure out not only a great new wine to try, but also what they can expect when they get home. One recent recommendation, she says, is a wine called Custard, from the North Coast of California. “It is that kind of rich, oaky chardonnay with the sorts of butter notes that people might expect when they hear a name like ‘Custard.’ It’s a creamy, decadent type of chardonnay.” Another wine recommended from the same region is a cabernet called Flyby. “You’ll get the best of them even without pairing them with food.”
Food will elevate Old World wines, however. “If you are going to get something from Italy, or if you are going to get a Bordeaux, you would absolutely pair it with food, and the food would bring out the flavors of the wine,” she says.
By branching out, a would-be wine enthusiast can develop their palate faster than they might expect.
“We carry a really popular wine called Garúa. It’s just the perfect New Zealand sauvignon blanc — zippy and tropical and very crisp, kind of grassy, with a grapefruit thing going on in it. It’s a lot of fun.” So if you’re into drinking that, what else do you try? A quick search of the grape’s origin will reveal it originated in the Loire Valley of France. “You’re going to find that they taste very different, but they have enough in common that you’ll still really enjoy both. And that really gives you a jumping off point for other grapes that grow in the Loire.”
Ultimately, it’s about being a little curious and a little adventurous, says Ball. “Your palate will get more and more intelligent as you go.”
