Jan 14, 2013
Facebook friends voted and the Grape Miniseries won for the topic this week! So for the first podcast of 2013 we tackle the King of the Spanish reds: Tempranillo. It has more…and less… to it than meets the eye. After lots of wonderful thanks and fun comments, we get to this fascinating, native Spanish grape. A few notes on it… The grape is from northern Spanish and gets its name from “Temprano” which means early, since it ripens 2 weeks before Rioja’s other important grape – Garnacha The wine is deep-colored, lower in acid and alcohol, and has amazing ageability but a lot of times it’s kind of bland on flavor. If it’s got any flavor it’s kind of like berries, plum, tobacco, vanilla, leather, and herbs. It can be a lot better in a blend, as the folks in Rioja can tell you. Climate and elevation is everything for Tempranillo — it does best in cool climates and at elevation. Yields HAVE to be controlled to produce a good wi [...]