Wine Terms: Reserva / Riserva
Reserva / Riserva what’s in a name? Do you ever wonder about some of the extra titles on the labels of wine bottles? Are they just some kind of marketing gimmick or do they have real meaning? Grand Cru, Premier Cru, 1st Growth, Gran Reserva, Superior, Classico… and on… here I’m just going to look at two of them for now: Reserva and Riserva. It’s important to check the country the wine is from as these terms have different meanings in different countries (as well as different spellings) and in European Union countries that meaning is defined by law whereas in other countries it can mean anything the winemaker wants…
Does a wine really need to breathe?
Lots of people have asked me this on my wine tastings. Is it necessary and what does it do anyway? The answer is definitely ‘yes’ but the amount required will depend on the type and age of the wine. Generally, the heavier and more tannic the wine the more it will benefit from being allowed to breathe. Don’t just remove the cork and leave the bottle on the kitchen side, the surface area in the neck of the bottle is about the size of a 1p/1 cent coin so you need to give the wine a chance by increasing the surface area. The traditional way to do this is with…
Cairanne ‘Les Six’ AOC 2017
I was looking along the shelves at Priory Wines in Lymington the other day and noticed a bottle of ‘Les Six’ Cairanne AOC. I was intrigued because I expected it to say Cotes du Rhone Villages but it doesn’t it simply says Cairanne AOC. The answer, I discovered after some investigation is that Cairanne has now been elevated to Cru status which means that it gets its own appellation. This was only confirmed on 25th June 2018 and all vintages since 2016 may now show Cairanne AOC. If you are lucky enough to find a 2015 Cairanne it will be labelled as Cotes du Rhone Villages. There are three levels of…