Wine Basics - White Wine Flashcards
Albariño
Spanish grape that makes crisp and light-bodied wines with good acidity, fairly high alcohol, and rich but dry peachy fruit flavors.
Champagne
A sparkling wine that must be grown and produced in the Champagne region in France, generally from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes. It additionally must be made using the “Méthode Champenoise,” which means bubbles are formed by a second fermentation inside the bottle while the wine sits on the “lees,” or yeast. The former gives it such quantity of small, tight bubbles, and the latter is what offers the trademark bread/toast notes, as well as hints of apple and grapefruit.
Chardonnay
Chardonnay is almost always easy to drink, even in the Old World style. You can expect California Chardonnay to be tropical fruit forward with oaky, buttery flavors, while Old World styles embrace more savory, mineral notes, and/or lighter and more floral flavors.
Chenin Blanc
Just knowing a wine is Chenin Blanc doesn’t tell you much - it can be bone-dry to dessert-sweet, it can be sparkling, etc. Chenin Blanc is from the Loire region in France, it can feature crisply, floral notes, apricot and apple, marzipan, straw, and honey flavors, but even then it can be sec (dry), demi-sec (medium dry), and moelleux (sweet). When explaining it to guests, know where your bottle falls.
Gewurztraminer
A distinctive floral bouquet of lychee, rose petal, and sometimes ginger marks this mostly Old World wine. It doesn’t have much natural acidity and is frequently made sweet, but is not always so.
Muscat/Muscato
It sounds silly, but one of the most distinctive things about the Muscat grape is how much its wine still resembles fresh grapes. It is frequently light, sweet, and fizzy, with an occasional rose petal or orange perfume.
Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio
Pinot Gris from France can be nutty, smoky, spicy, and sometimes sweet, but what we’re far more used to is the Italian style Pinot Grigio, which is mostly crisp, light, and fairly neutral.
Prosecco
Prosecco is a variety of white grape grown in the Veneto region of Italy, and also gives its name to the style – frequently a soft, off-dry, almond scented sparkling wine, with a slightly bitter finish.
Riesling
Most people think of Riesling as just a sweet white wine, and most of what we see on menus in the US is exactly that, but Riesling can be anything from bone dry to very sweet, from low to medium alcohol, and from light to medium body. Frequently features apple, lime, and honey, and stone-fruit flavors, while more rustic styles can have a gasoline note, and/or slate minerality.
Sauvignon Blanc
A crisp, dry, bracing white wine, usually from either France (Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume are both Sauv. Blanc) or New Zealand. It can feature bright grapefruit, grassy, and herbaceous flavors from the New World, as well as hints of gooseberry and black currant. Frequently marked by a bright and invigorating acidity.
Semillion
Can range from sweet in the French Sauternes, to broad and fat in Bordeaux, to smooth and lemony in Australia. Aside from the seldomly seen Sauternes, it’s best known as an ideal blend for Sauvignon Blanc, to compliment, add body, and help cut the acidity.
Viognier
Viognier is a very difficult grape to grow well, but has nonetheless been coming into style of late. French styles have peach and apricot richness. Iin California and Australia, they imitate that style, making wines that are voluptuously scented with stone fruits, musk, and ginger, and frequently have a creamy, full texture.
