So I recently had to opportunity to eat some ripe and ready wine grapes. This has been a craving of mine for a very long time. I have tasted hundreds of wines but never an actual wine grape ready to be crushed.
Can you tell which is which?
In my wine class I was presented with two grape bunches just picked from the Frescobaldi Estate. My teacher, Diletta Frescobaldi is one of the current owners of the Frescobaldi wine enterprise, so she had no problem takng some grapes from the vineyards. One of them was Cabernet Sauvignon and the other Petit Verdot. Without knowing which was which, it was pretty easy to determine their identities just from sight.
Cabernet Sauvignon grapes usually make a dense, dark and tannic wine. All of these attributes mainly come from the skins. The berries of this cluster, were very small and tightly packed. Flavor on the palate was sweet, medium acidity but with a thick skin. The one flavor that stood out was a strong green pepper taste. Italian Cabernets tend to develop these green pepper nuances, especially wines in the north. The Petit Verdot berries were much larger and not densely packed. On the palate they were much more acidic and less flavorful. The skin was also not as thick. Both were just down right delicious and only wish you could find these regularly in the store.
The reason for Cabernet Sauvignon’s high tannin content is due to small size of the berry. Think about it. The ratio of skin to pulp is higher in smaller berries than it is for larger ones so the resulting wine will have less juice for the same amount of tannin. This is partly the reason for Cabernet’s high tannin content in conjunction with its thick skin.
small oak barrels
The concempt of high surface area to volume ratio is also used when aging wine. Traditional French barriques hold 225 liters. Other wooden vessels can hold 1000’s of liters. It is up to the winemaker to decide the level of oak influence. When wine is aged in small barrels, the surface area of wine exposed to the oak is significantly higher than that of larger barrels. This can be a problem when the wine is left to age for too long. The oak can dominate the flavor of a wine and the balance is completely thrown off. When done right, French/American barriques can impart delicious sweet spice flavor to a wine as well give the wine a nice softness and roundness.
big and small barrels at Altesino Winery
The traditional method of aging wine in wood is done through the use of the bigger barrels, like the ones to your right. These are the vats where the Brunellos are held prior to bottling at the Altesino Winery. These larger oak barrels because of their low surface area to volume ratio impart subtle oak flavors and tend to leave a rougher, more rustic style of wine.
The Ride Inside 