[OC] Wine characteristics by grape type

10 comments

1. You have a lot of red grapes in the white wine section and while you can make white wine from red grapes, the percentage of white wines that are made from, say, Syrah are extremely small.

2. zinfandel and primitivo use the same grapes, interesting to see they’re relatively far apart on the scale. tho ‘body’ has to be at least a little subjective.

3. What does it mean to have a light or heavy body?

4. Hm some of this could be cleaned up a bit more – some of the grapes appear multiple times on the lists with different names (i.e. grauburgunder / pinot gris), (Weissburgunder / pinot blanc), (Primitivo / zinfandel), etc.

5. hmm. i’ve never had a light cab franc.

6. No wonder wine doesn’t agree with me given how acidic most of it is.

7. White Spätburgunder? White Syrah?

8. Chardonnay is about as flavourless a wine as you can get. It famously tastes of oak because the only flavour comes from the oak casks. How it comes out 2nd for strong whites is beyond me. I have big doubts about the whole list from that alone.

9. Interesting that Grenache and Garnacha have such different results. Seems to indicate that terroir and regional winemaking tradition are just as important (if not more) to the resulting wine as the type of grape.

   I guess, rather than going by my favorite varietals, I just need to try *every* wine. For science!

10. This graphic seems to confuse grape varietals with wine categories as seen with the false categorization of some red varieties as white wines.

    It would be more logical to add Rose and orange wine categories since it then splits the verities by wine making method.

    For example, a Pinot Noir made in the same manner as a white would be a Rose, while a Viognier made in the style of a red would be generally categorized as an Orange wine.

    This is an over simplification of course but helps clear up the confusion.

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