TYPES OF WINE, VARIETALS, SIMPLY EXPLAINED
Have you ever heard the term “varietal” and not exactly known what that meant?
When talking about types of wines, you've kind of winged it or thought, “Oh gosh, that’s something I should figure out tomorrow.” You don't have to anymore because today is the day.
I'm going to explain it to you in terms that are a little easier to understand and relate it to something familiar. I have a little tray with a couple of different varieties of apples as well as pears. These are something you see at the grocery store in your everyday life all the time. There isn't anything different between picking out a Honeycrisp or a Gala, or an Anjou or a red Anjou, or a yellow pear or red pear, compared to different varieties of grape or different types of wines.
Each one of these has a distinct flavor profile, like different types of wines.
Honeycrisp tastes different than Galas. For example, Honeycrisps are crispier, and they have a different fruit flavor profile. Your expectations of sweetness are different between the two. Grapes and different types of wines work the same way. A varietal is any variety of grape out there. There's a ton of them. Syrah would be one you may be familiar. Merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, riesling, viognier, sauvignon blanc. These are things that you can easily spot on a new world wine label. If you haven't seen the video on how to read new world wine labels, please check that out.
A varietal is a single kind of grape made into a bottle of wine.
Typically it's a hundred percent and that varietal, viognier, for example, is listed on the label. A blend is when you take more than one kind of grape, or if I were making applesauce, more than one type of apple, put those two or more varieties together, then you would have a blend.
That's all there is to it.
There are hundreds of different varieties of grapes and types of wines out there in the world. When they're made by themselves, that's a single varietal, and it 's listed on the label that way. Then you know that's the only thing you're drinking. If you're drinking a blend, then you know that you're getting more than one grape. I hope that's useful to you. Be sure and subscribe to our YouTube Channel. I have tons more fantastic content coming your way.