Best red wine for people with diabetes to drink standard.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from standard.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
One Bottle: 2018 La Madeleine de St Mont, Plaimont, St Mont worldoffinewine.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from worldoffinewine.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Few parts of wine-growing France can match the intrigue and diversity of the Pyrenean foothills. It’s a region which combines relatively low latitudes (warmth and generous light), rumpled relief and altitude (for freshness and cool nights) and generous rainfall (drought spells are rare here). This diversity of landscape is reflected by the fact that many growers here produce vines alongside a range of other crops, and raise livestock, too. Their vineyards are carefully sited, and sometimes of great antiquity – but not all have time to make and market their own wines. Plaimont is the hugely successful regional partner for growers across the region, helping shape and craft the Gascon wine patrimony in a wide variety of classic, contemporary and innovative styles.
Larkmead Vineyard / Photo by Bob McClenahan
Once upon a time, Americans struggled to pronounce words like “Cabernet Sauvignon” and “Petit Verdot.” Might we struggle soon with “Manseng Noir” or “Arinarnoa”?
For now, in Napa Valley, there’s no doubt that Cab remains king. In 2019, 64.6% of all red grapes harvested were Cabernet Sauvignon, with an average price of $7,941 per ton, the highest in history, per the 2019 Napa County Agricultural Crop Report.
In that same report, no other grape even comes close to its 22,504 producing acres. Not Chardonnay (5,950 acres), not Merlot (4,072), and certainly not Pinot Noir (2,680).
But Cab hasn’t always reigned supreme here. In 1966, the year Robert Mondavi built his Oakville winery, there were more acres of Carignan, Gamay, Zinfandel and Petite Sirah than Cabernet.