The History of Wine in 100 Bottles: From Bacchus to Bordeaux and Beyond
Oz Clarke
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 1454915617
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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still have missed a few gems. And it isn’t just the big moments in wine that I celebrate – it’s also the eccentric, the bombastic, the mundane. Do you really think it’s important to celebrate the first White Zinfandel, the first Liebfraumilch, or the first ‘bag-in-box’? Well, actually, yes I do. Such events are of massive importance in the spreading of our wine culture all around the world. Are they as important as the invention of champagne; the creation of anti-fraud systems of controlled
the space, stopping wine leaking out and air creeping in. And it seems as if it was the English who ‘rediscovered’ the use of cork as the perfect bottle stopper. Certainly cork was being mentioned in England – and not anywhere else – by the 16th century. Shakespeare has Rosalind say, ‘I pray thee take thy cork out of thy mouth’ in As You Like It in 1599. And it was soon after that James I, in 1615, forbade the cutting down of forests to fuel glass furnaces. This led to the development of coal as
wine with supposedly the same wine coming out of bottles, and invariably the bag-in-box wines were inferior – usually just plain unclean. They would never catch on… Well, they did. In some markets – Sweden is an example – they have captured as much as 50 per cent of sales. And nowadays, the quality is invariably pretty good. For that – as in so many other facets of basic wine quality – we have to thank the Australians. The Aussies have always been sticklers for detail in wine – crucial, because
vineyard, planted in 2006. And this remote patch of Malbec, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc is at 3110 metres. And this is the wine I’ve tried – the Malbec, tasting like very ripe but sweet-sour wild cherries strewn with violets. If the Chileans have their way, they’ll overtake Altura Máxima – their leading vines specialist Pedro Parra is trying to establish a vineyard in the Valley of the Moon at 3410 metres – but for now, I’m saying this is the highest. In hot countries like Argentina, with
Bristol Cream Sherry, 38, 39, 149 Broadbent, Michael, 57, 137 Brunello di Montalcino, 74 Buena Vista winery, 84–85 Burgundy Appellation Contrôlée, 106 in Australia, 145 bottles for, 68, 69 Chardonnay, 144, 145 Clos de Vougeot, 30–31 Gallo Hearty Burgundy, 132–33 labels for, 87 in New Zealand, 145 phylloxera in, 92 popularity of, 144–45 in World War II, 115 in United States of America, 145 Byblos, 21 C Cabernet Franc grape, 122–23 Cabernet Sauvignon grape, 88, 99, 116