A short post on the Decanter blog a few months back alerted me to the existence of The Wine Century Club where membership is based on having tasted a minimum of 100 different grape varieties. I was immediately hooked ……. how many had I got?
Having trawled through my old log book of 35 years ago plus a bit of memory searching, it seemed I had around 80. Oh bugger, I’m going to have to start drinking some new wines …. but where to begin? How about Italy, the home of Centurions!
I trawled through a few supermarket shelves plus The Wine Society (UK) and selected a dozen or so to try. Here are the main grapes and the typical wine type/name made from each one, although in some cases all you can find is a blend of several grapes:
Sangiovese, corvina corvinone rondinella, montepulciano, Nebbiolo, Falanghina, Verdicchio, Malvasia, Grillo, Vermentino, Molinara,
It was interesting to observe two things, first the taste of the wine in terms of matching it to my own preferences for Pinot Noir or wines of lower tannin and acidity, and second the general quality of the wine regarding colour, nose, balance, fruit, finish etc. Unsurprisingly a trend emerged, so using our family guideline of scoring that a wine needs to have a score of 80 to be acceptable, with scores of 90+ being “nectar of the gods”, can you spot the trend?
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I understand, I keep telling myself to see how I score, but after all of these years, I think I might be embarrassed if I did not have a hundred different varietals.
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It was fun to check and go for the final 20 I needed a few months back.
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It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.
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