European Wines

A General Overview

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Carpe diem. Vivere bene! Gratia Deo.

This is a brief overview of wines produced in Europe, an appendix to my book HOW TO EUROPE: The Complete Travelers Handbook. The entire book is published free on-line by the traveler, author, photographer, webmaster, and wine spitter — yours truly — with help from my daughter Stephanie and good friend Paula in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Patronage at euro-shoppe keeps this site on line. Questions, comments, contributions, and complaints are welcome. See NOTE TO READERS.
Since there are a guadzillion people writing about wine in the web universe you might be wondering "What does this Bermont guy know about wine?" I say, something like half a century and 15,000 bottles worth. Mon Dieu! See my wine qualifications below. Updated 30 August 2016.

Wine ott?

WHEN AND WHERE

Wine has been made for thousands of years. Records of wines and vineyards date from the earliest times of recorded history. After water and milk, wine is the oldest beverage known to man, and the best of the three.

The wine producing areas of the world generally lie between latitudes 30N and 52N and between 30S and 40S. This includes most of southern and central Europe, and many other areas around the word. We'll focus here on Europe since Europe is what this web site is all about.

France

Think France and you automatically think wine. France has 12 major wine producing areas. The most familiar are Bordeaux and Burgundy, but there is also Rhône, Alsace, Languedoc-Roussillon, and others. Best known red wine grapes are Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Gamay, and Pinot Noir. The whites include Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chablis.

Germany

Germany has 13 distinct wine producing regions. Some of the areas are Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Rheinhessen, Pfalz, and Nahe. The major grapes used in German white wine production are the Riesling, Kerner, and Silvaner. Blauer Spätburgunder, the German name for Pinot Noir, is the grape of some red wines.

Italy

Italy produces more wine than any other country, and has an almost endless number of wine regions. Well known wine producing areas include Piedmont, Lombardy, and Tuscany. Red and white wines are produced from a large number of grapes, perhaps 1,000 varieties. Red wines include Barbera, Montepulciano, Nebbiolo, and Sangiovese. The Trebbiano grape is the source of much of Italy's white wine. Another red, Primitivo, is very similar to California's Zinfandel, and some say that it is the same grape which was brought to California in the mid-1800s.

Spain

There are about 40 wine regions scattered throughout Spain. The best known include Rioja, Navarra, and Aragón. Major red wine grapes include Tempranillo, Grenacha Tinta, and Graciano. Viura is a major white wine variety.

Portugal

Vineyards are located throughout Portugal. There are three levels of appellation with approximately 45 regions. Major regions include Vinho Verde, Dao, Bairrada, Setubal Peninsula, and Alentejo. Popular white grapes are Alvarinho and Loueiro. Red wine grapes are Baga and Tinta Roriz. Portugal is also known for its fortified wines, namely Sherry, Port, and Madiera.

Austria

Austria is a significant wine producing nation even though it is not known as such because very little of its wine is exported. There are 4 major wine areas in Austria - Niederosterrich, Burgenland, Steiermark (Styria), and Wien (Vienna). These areas include 15 named wine regions. White grapes are Grüner Veltliner, Riesling, Müller-Thurgau, Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), and Rülander. Major red wine grapes include Zweigelt, Blauer Portugieser, and Blaufränkish.

Greece

I do not know much about Greek wine, except Retsina. I love it. Most people spit. Retsina is really great when having moussaka for dinner.

PROPER CARE OF WINES

You wouldn't store your milk on the kitchen counter or your bananas next to the fireplace. The same goes for wine.

Storage

Wines keep very well and improve over the years when properly cared for.
- It is important to lay wine on its side for long term storage. This keeps the cork from drying out. If the cork should dry out, air can enter the bottle and help turn your beautiful wine to bitter vinegar.
- Keep wine at a constant temperature in a cool dark place. If you don't have a basement in which to house your wine cellar, leave it in its box on its side and put the wine on the floor of a closet or under the sink.
- Do not disturb your wine or "check it out" until you are ready to drink it. Wines mature in the bottle and some throw a sediment of acidic crystals. You definitely do not want this stuff in your glass.

Displaying Your Wines

If you wish to display your wines in a designer rack in a warm well-lighted place - kitchen or living room - display the bottles you have already enjoyed. Fill the empties with clear or colored water and recork them. Nobody will notice, or care, unless it's a burglar who broke in to steal your precious wines.

Á votre santé.

MY WINE QUALIFICATIONS

So how do you know that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to wine. My travel qualifications are written out at Meet The Author. There is nothing in that blurb about wine, eh?

Beginnings

Well, as a matter of fact I've been drinking the rouge for about half a century. I started out, probably like most kids, drinking Italian Lambrusco with pizza. Mateus from Portugal was another of my early favorites. When you are in college you drink what you can afford.

About 10 years into my career, in my early 30's, I moved to Southern California, Newport Beach to be specific. I was single and making good money as a chemical engineer. I wined and dined the girls a couple times a week. I started developing my taste buds and favorited a few wines. The most popular red wine at that time was cabernet sauvignon. Most people couldn't pronounce those big French words so they just ordered "cab." Another full bodied dry red wine, merlot, has also been a long time favorite in Southern California. Both of these grapes are the primary grapes in wines from the Bordeaux Appelation of France. They are also the mainstay of California red wines, and many wines from Australia, South Africa, Chile, and Argentina.

These Bordeaux grapes are OK but my taste buds kept probing around and found a better grape, pinot noir. As mentioned above, the pinot noir grape is the foundation of red wines from Borgougne. We know Borgougne as the Burgundy region of eastern France, centered on Dijon and Beaune. Pinot noir is also grown around the world. Pinot noir is generally less expensive than cabernet sauvignon or merlot, but I would pay more for it. I hear that there was a movie about pinot noir. Being as it came from Hollywood I assumed that it was blasphemous or stupid or both so I didn't see it.

Home Wine Tastings

My adopted home town, Newport Beach is blessed with many of the better things in life — sea, sail boats, sand, surf, sun, sunsets, etc., etc.. One of the man made blessings is a great wine store near 17th Street, not to mention nice selections of ruby liquids in most of the grocery stores in town. There is also one of those huge box warehouse stores nearby and a famous food import store in town, both of which have a good selection of good wine at good prices. You can buy almost anything with a cork in it. But even better than Newport Beach is Long Beach. I worked there for a few years and found a large wine shop near my office. This had the greatest selection of wines I had ever seen. I developed a wine shopping routine for Friday after work. Before getting on Pacific Coast Highway for my commute home I would drive to the wine store and buy a half case of various pinot noir wines from different wineries from all over the world. During the week I would conduct my own nightly wine tastings. In a few months I had tried everything in my mid range price level and selected one brand as my standard home wine. Thereafter I would buy it by the case and replenish the supply as I ran out. I didn't keep a "wine cellar" as such because I was living in apartments and had no room for that. Also, my favorite was a California brand, B.V., and was available everywhere. When I found it on sale I would clean the shelf. Let's hear it for free market wine prices!

Going International, Holland, France

My next move was to the Netherlands. To avoid too much redundancy take a look at my aforementioned Meet The Author travel bio. I lucked out with a company transfer to Haarlem, a beautiful city neaar Amsterdam. The Dutch don't make wine but plenty of the beverage and its cousins are available. I tasted just about everything in Holland and wherever I went on road trips around Europe. The American market is rather narrow and products available are limited, even in the well-endowed area where I lived. Europe has fine liquids that are unknown in the USA. After two years in Holland I came back to California and worked my way out of my job. So I went back to Europe to write my book, etc., etc. After getting the book published, a DIY job, and selling out several printings I went back to Europe. It was France this time on my own. I did my Paris life on the Left Bank and ended up with a wife.

Going International, Germany, France

After the baby we lucked out again with a company transfer to work in a Dorf near Frankfurt a/M for a couple of years. We lived in a big house on a cliff overlooking the Main River with a glimpse of the Schloss in Aschaffenburg. This is in a little finger of Bavaria, an area known as Franconia and/or Franken. Vineyards covered the hills just north of the city. Frankly, no pun intended, we were not impressed by the German wines. That area produces Silvaner grape white wines and there are no bargains. Elizabeth and I preferred red Burgundies. As for German red wines we learned fast that we didn't want to get close enough to even spit.

We rose to meet this challenge. Sinple, just drive over to Burgundy and get the real thing. So we loaded up the car with the million things that then two year old Stephanie needed and drove over to Dijon on Fridays for a weekend sortie. On Saturdays we drove around Beaune and Nuits-St-Georges looking for wine merchants with signs announcing degustation. Now that might sound like the wrong place to be, but it means "tasting." With the barrels and paintings of grape clusters all over the place we knew this is where we wanted to be. We also drove up into the hills and found some wineries welcoming us with their degustation signs. This was the Mother Lode.

We would walk in and try to find the proprietor. Here we are walking around all these tanks, barrels, and bottles full of vin de Bourgougne and there is nobody to be found! Finally we would find Authority and proceed to taste. We bought the wine en vrac, meaning "in bulk" rather than ready bottled. Polyproplyene containers of 10, 20, and 30 liter capacity could be purchased from the vintner. We accumulated a supply of these and had well over a 100 liter capacity for the wine expeditions, which we did two or three times a year. You do the math. We had wine every night.

Corker-in-Charge

I bought a supply of bottles, corks, and a corking tool. The vintner gave us the labels and we bought pine wood wine racks at Ikea. The week after the Burgundy trip I would cork our booty. There were 150 bottles. Mon Dieu! This is a lot of work, especially for a desk jockey, but it saved plenty of money compared to buying bottled wine. Here is a picture, wine purchase, a few years later as I bought more wine on a road trip from Milano to Amsterdam. Good habits are hard to break.

The Lost Wine

As I said in the caption to the intro photo above "I have no wine recommendations." But I would be remiss if I did not mention a couple of wines we "discovered" on these Burgundy sorties.

There is a Burgundy wine called passetoutgrains. This is a blend of wines produced from the pinot noir grape and the gamay grape. It can contain between ⅓ and ⅔ of each. The more pinot noir the better. Passetoutgrains is my favorite wine. I once tried to find it in California and after many phone calls I finally did. But it was not worth the effort. When you are in Burgundy you will find it easily.

The other "discovery" is a white wine. As you know chardonnay is the best known white wine of Burgundy. I used to smell it on the breath of my secretary in California. It is nauseating, especially the oak aged variety. There is another white grape in Burgundy, aligoté. I found this at a small winery somewhere in the hills around Beaune. I bought a ten liter carboy. Unfortunately, this is the lost wine. I could never find that winery again, and nobody in the USA has ever heard of this wine. There is an old saying that "export quality" is the stuff that the locals won't drink. If the locals won't export it what do you think?

Wine Consultant

In the late 90's I took a course and obtained a certificate as a bar tender. That certificate helped land a single one-night job as a bar man for a millenium charity celebration in Los Angeles. The one-off job nearly paid for the cost of the lessons.

A few years later the certificate helped me pull in a part-time job as a wine consultant for a wine importer. For several years I was part of teams conducting wine tastings at consumer trade shows nationwide — Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, etc. The objective was to sell wines. We were "consultants" in name only, more or less. I am barely a mediocre salesman but I had fun and met a lot of fellow wine drinkers along the way. We are the best people, you know.

Fini

I continue to make my own wine. That is an easy and safe thing to do. I learned how to do it out of necessity when I lived in Saudi Arabia for a year. Not only is the desert sand as dry as a bone but no alcohol is permitted in "The Kingdom," as they call it over there. It can be serious slammer time if you are caught. Those jails are straight out of the 15th century. I saw one in person, fortunately from the no-so-bad side of the bars.

My Dad would always say "Rules are made to be broken." I don't think he ever broke any laws but he liked to say that about the petty stuff. So I had a dozen bottles constantly under fermentation in my locked closet in Al-Khobar. If it wasn't locked up the apartment cleaning crew would take their share when I wasn't around. Anything with alcohol content is known as sidiki, "my friend," in The Kingdom.

To get the hard stuff we bought home booze from an established ex-pat guy. He delivered direct from the trunk of his car at a pre-arranged spot out in the desert. A buddy and I turned over a Bennie ($100 bill) and received a gallon jug of 190 proof uncut distilled alcohol. I am not making this stuff up. Do-it-yourself moonshine in The Kingdom is a threat to your life, liberty, and bank account. It is dangerous to make and some guys blew up their houses in the process. They would be immediately arrested and held for a year or so. Tales of The Kingdom could fill another chapter, maybe a book.

That's my wine story, up to now.

Here's mud in your eye. I learned that from my Dad also.

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For much more information consult these authoritative books. The Finest Wines of Germany:
A Regional Guide to the Best Producers and Their Wines
by Stephan Reinhardt and Hugh Johnson

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German Wine Guide
by Armin Diel and Joel Payne

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Rheingold - The German Wine Renaissance
by Owen Bird

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The Wines of Germany (Classic Wine Library)
by Stephen Brook

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Here is probably more than you'll ever need to know about wine. Chemistry of Winemaking
by A. Dinsmoor Webb
Published by the American Chemical Society

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The Marling Menu Master series is the best for interpreting restaurant offerings in Germany. Marling Menu Master
Germany

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The Wine Roads of Europe
by Marc and Kim Million

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How To Read a Wine Label by Jeffrey M. Pogash

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Another choice for a German menu reader is Langenscheidt's. Langenscheidt's Pocket Menu Reader Germany

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Another choice for a menu reader is Berlitz. Berlitz European Menu Reader: For Eating Out in over 25 Countries

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The Berlitz pocket dictionary should cover you in most situations. German Pocket Dictionary Berlitz

Free to use but not to abuse.

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