Grape Variety and Aging

[John_Morris]

Well both bother me!

So there!!!

Anyway, it is actually a cultivar, which means a “cultivated variety”. I think I’ve posted this before. I’m willing to give up on that one because if you’re not in horticulture that would confuse people.

But if you’re interested, a variety is a distinct version of a species that should produce true to type. So if you plant a seed, you’ll get that same plant. They occur in nature. A cultivar usually wouldn’t. So you come out to your rose and find that your five petal rose named Dr. W. Van Fleet has a branch that is producing flowers with many petals and you cut that branch and root it and you have a new rose and you call it New Dawn and you patent it and have the first rose patent in the US. In other words you find a sport on a plant and you propagate that, or cultivate it. Or you find something naturally growing and you cultivate that. Yesterday I noticed new growth on two twigs I’ve been trying to root, so I’ve successfully propagated a lemon tree that I like. Until people actually took little brushes and painted pollen on flowers, those are the ways cultivars were found and continued. They are clones. And they have names that are capitalized when written, e.g. Merlot, Zweigelt, New Dawn, Forest Pansy.

But it’s actually harder because there are naming conventions and breeding conventions and a lot of people refer to cultivars as varieties so I tend to leave it at that. But a grape like Merlot is not a varietal and it is capitalized when written.

A monovarietal wine is a wine made of a single variety. People in the wine biz started using the term “varietal” to sound all cool and like they have their own jargon, but to me it sounds like a Khardashian fan where literacy was never really in the cards.

1. I knew already that I would NEVER want to get in an argument with you about flora.

2. I think the noun “varietal” came in part from the trade term “fighting varietals,” no?

Fighting Varietal: This term was coined in the 1980s to describe a new category of wines, labeled as varietals but priced nearly as inexpensively as generics (e.g., “Mountain Chablis” or “Hearty Burgundy”). Glen Ellen was one of the first to sell good quality Chardonnay and Cabernet for $4 to $6 per bottle. Since then, the category has expanded; it includes varietals such as Merlot, producers from regions as far-flung as Chile, Australia and the south of France, and prices up to nearly $10 per bottle. But the concept is the same: a varietal wine of good quality at an everyday price.

After 30+ years of usage, the Wine Spectator has given its imprimatur to the noun form:

Varietal: Refers to a wine labeled with a single grape variety. Used predominantly in the United States and Australia, the term “varietal” denotes a wine named after and made from a single grape variety. For example, “The popular varietal is served in many restaurants” and “The herbal aromas of this Sauvignon Blanc are varietally correct.” For varietal bottling, a minimum of 75 percent of that wine must be made from the designated grape variety. The term is frequently misused in reference to a grape variety itself.

How can you and Jonathan argue with that kind of authority?

[Ian_Sutton]

Hi Mike
… and welcome to the world of variety vs. varietal, something that has occupied far too much space on this little corner of the internet!

I hope that thread drift doesn’t make us come across like a load of old pedants

Regards
Ian

• The fact that many of us are isn’t the point

[GregT]

Mostly John though!!

And erudite as he is, he’s looking to Wine Spectator for authority!

Oh my!

[Eric_Lundblad]

Why does ‘Varietal’ get all the grief and ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’ gets none?

[Dan_Kravitz]

to Mike Ott,

Balance equals longevity. The rest is a few million details.

Yes, there are some types of wine that are inherently longer lived than others.

I remember a visit to a deeply traditional Burgundy producer in the middle of nowhere, about 30 years ago. After tasting, I noted that his whites seemed to be longer-lived than his reds. His reply: “Of course”, as he looked on me with pity for my ignorance (he grew Meursault and Mercurey).

Usually 1st Growth Bordeaux is longer-lived than Beaujolais Nouveau. That’s as close as anybody can get to a hard and fast rule.

Side note to all the purist, luddite, persnickety, pompous, self-righteous, &c:
I am a Mister Language Person.
Language is and always has been mutable. Being technically correct that ‘varietal’ is a descriptor, means that you ignore common, now approaching universal usage.
In other words, You Lose.
Calling a grape or a wine a varietal is correct because that’s the way a large majority of the people who use the word mean it. Whether or not your name is Canute, you are free to order the tide not to come in. But do not expect success.

Dan Kravitz

[GregT]

“Language is and always has been mutable. Being technically correct that ‘varietal’ is a descriptor, means that you ignore common, now approaching universal usage.”

Yes to the first, not so much the second. If you ask people on the street what a varietal is, you get stares. If you tell them that for wine alone, you use it as a noun so as to create a private wine jargon, they think that’s the way they’re supposed to use it if they’re part of the in-crowd. It really is just as easy to speak correctly.

[Jonathan_Loesberg]

John,

If you read my original post, you will find that I said that the one accepted usage of varietal as a noun was to refer to a wine made of one vape variety. Both of your quotations refer to this usage. Neither of them justified referring to a grape variety as a varietal.

[James_Billy]

Grape = variety
Wine (from a single variety) = varietal