Jaclyn Stuart, co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wine & Food Pairing, led our fifth class of the WSET Intermediate Level course. This session was devoted to the wines of Italy, Spain and Portugal. We spent the majority of the class discussing the wine producing regions of Italy. The smaller, but no less important regions of Spain and Portugal were covered in much less detail.
Italy’s rich history of winemaking rivals that of France. Regions like Tuscany and Piemonte (among the many others) have been making distinctive wines for centuries. Italy’s location shape give it many different climate zones where numerous types of white and red grape varieties thrive. It would be easy to spend the entire course talking about nothing other than Italian wines.
Spain, though much larger than Italy in geographic area, has much fewer wine producing regions and even fewer grape varieties. Regions such as Rioja and Ribera del Duero make the majority of the quality Spanish wines. Tempranillo and garnacha (grenache) are the top red varieties, while international varieties, like chardonnay, make up the majority whites.
We spent the last part of the evening discussing the wines of Portugal. The Duoro region topped the discussion with its high tannin, high acid red wines. We also spent a short time reviewing Vinho Verde, the slightly fizzy, light bodied white wine that is becoming more popular in the US.
Jessica Bell returns next week to give us the low-down on grenache, syrah and riesling.
Wines Tasted (Class 5):
- Camp du Rouss 2005 Barbera d’Asti (Piemonte, Italy)
- Poggio Vignoso 2008 (Chianti, Italy)
- Levantino 2006 Primitivo (Salento, Italy)
- Compania de Telmo Rodriguez “LZ” 2007 (Rioja, Spain)
- Bodegas Navarro-Lopéz Laguna de la Nava 1999 Gran Reserva (Valdapeñas, Spain)
- Castillo Real Monastrell 2006 (Bullas, Spain)
