The Wine Bible

PINOT GRIS

TEMPRANILLO

Today, it is grown in numerous provinces in the south-central region of Castilla-La Mancha (especially in the denomination of Jumilla), where it’s used to make delicious, sometimes muscular wines with dry, bitter espresso-like flavors (red meat is helpful when consuming them).

The color of a given wine comes from a group of pigments in grape skins called anthocyanins.

NEBBIOLO

The best Alsace pinot gris is complex, opulent, often a bit smoky and spicy, but still precise and crisp.

In flavor and structure, sangiovese is, again, closer to pinot noir than it is to cabernet sauvignon. Sangiovese, for example, takes its structure primarily from acidity, rather than tannin.

Straw, hay, grass, smoke, green tea, green herbs, lime, and gunflint charge around in your mouth with wonderful intensity.

Merlot in Bordeaux is planted mostly outside of the Médoc, and is especially renowned on the Right Bank—in the appellations of Pomerol and St.-Émilion.