What brings stature and significance to red wine? What commands the next sip, marks a memory, or turns a conversational lubricant into a topic in its own right?
Red and white wines, remember, are different objects. White wine is a ferment of pressed juice alone. Not so red wine: its juice undergoes a conversational exchange with grape skins, pips, and sometimes even stems, during and after fermentation. That’s the source of its dark colours – and at best, much else.
Colour alone, staining a fruit ferment, matters less than you’d think. Significance in red wine comes from aromatic complexity combined with density of flavour and texture in the mouth. Oak is a side-show, too; the less detectable, the better. It’s the conversational exchange with those skins that lends the best red wines their interest.
Most wines with significance of this sort begin life in Europe, in the long-established wine regions of Italy, France and Spain. Density and texture are much harder to find in red wines produced elsewhere in the northern hemisphere or in the southern hemisphere.
Why so? It’s possible that the difference is cultural. National palates exist, and French or Italian drinkers are more relaxed than drinkers elsewhere about sometimes affronting textures in red wine. Such wines come into being with and for local food cultures; they make most sense in gastronomic dialogue. Wise winemakers beyond Europe understand such relationships, and create their finest red wines for the table, too, encouraging lengthy conversations between juice and skins during fermentation. Yet the results are rarely as texturally prolific as in Europe, suggesting that climate and soil factors may also be in play.
Compare, for example, a well-made red burgundy (Bourgogne) with ambitious wines made from the same grape variety, Pinot Noir, elsewhere in the world. Pinot from New Zealand or Oregon may be deeper in colour and have more seductive and beguiling fruit profiles than in Bourgogne, while the burgundy is paler and more delicate. A palpable textural grip, though, will often mark the burgundy, while it is absent or less prominent in its non-European peers.
That underscores the fact that colour alone is not diagnostic when you’re searching for significance in red wine. There are reds from at least four zones of Italy that combine pale or translucent colours with sometimes remarkable structure: the Nebbiolo-based reds of Piedmont (especially Barolo and Barbaresco); the best dry reds of the Veneto; fine Sangiovese from upland Tuscany (such as Chianti Classico); and the high-altitude reds of Sicily’s Etna.
The greatest Grenache-based reds, too, are rarely dark in colour, but can convey both stature and significance, even when grown in warm locations. Spain has fine examples from Priorat and the Gredos mountains west of Madrid, as does France from Collioure and Châteauneuf du Pape. Australia and Argentina produce black wines aplenty, but they are rarely texturally detaining; instead, it’s acidity and oak in counterpoise to lavish fruit flavour that brings inner tension, while their textures can often be affably smooth.
In south-west France, notably Bordeaux, physical conditions and local varieties combine to provide wines that are very dark when young, as well as deeply textured. Don’t overlook wilder cousins such as Madiran and Cahors. The best from all three regions repay age, and age in itself can bridle textures. But the energy and exuberance of youth can be delicious, too.
Maybe, though, you prefer a smooth and supple red to one where density and texture intrigue. Such wines delight and charm, and you’re in luck: they’re not hard to find. Red wine can, though, be as moving as great music – and that tends to happen when the conversation between juice and skins has turned profound. That’s what opens previously unimagined vistas to wine drinkers, and why such wines are the most passionately pursued of all.
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This article appears in the 27 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The Optimist’s Dilemma
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