Ten Basic Facts About Wine And Wine Making In The Napa And Sonoma Valleys Of California, America’s Premium Wine Growing Area.
- What are the two natural ingredients in wine?
The two ingredients in wine are grape juice and yeast. Grapes provide the flavor, color aroma and body of the wine. The fermentation process relies on yeast.
- Does red wine from red grapes and white wine from green grapes?
No. The color of the grape skin does not matter. Beneath the skin the pulp is white and the juice that comes from the fruit is clear. The red color comes from crushing the skin and leaving the skins in the barrel during fermentation.
- Is California’s oldest commercial winery in the Napa or Sonoma valley?
The oldest winery is Buena Vista winery located in the valley of Sonoma. However Napa does host the second oldest, the Charles Krug Winery. Of course the mission priests from Spain were making alter wine long before. Both of these historic wineries are on the SelfTour Napa and Sonoma GPS guided driving App.
- How much sugar is there in a glass of wine?
Not as much as you think. In the fermentation process, most of the fruit’s sugar turns to alcohol. A five-ounce glass of red wine contains less than 1 gram of sugar. White and sweet wines have more. Pinot Grigio has the fewest with about a half gram.
- Will drinking wine make you fat?
No, but the large pizza you eat with it will. Drinking wine actually causes your blood sugar to drop. This stimulates your brain to want you to eat more and something sugary, salty or fatty.
- What is a varietal?
Varietal is a fancy word for the type of grape. Over a hundred types grow around the world but almost all California wines come from about a dozen types of grapes. In the Napa and Sonoma valleys Chardonnay is the king varietal for white wines, while the most planted red wine varietal is Zinfandel. Most wines are a mix of varietals. The best way to taste a wine’s flavor is by tasting a single varietal wine. Federal law requires that 75% of the grapes must be a single varietal in order to have this designation indicated on the label.
- What is an appellation?
Certain varietals grow better in different appellations. An appellation is a specific growing region, typically a microclimate, where the topography and soil contribute to the overall character of the grapes. There are over ten appellations in Napa county and eight in Sonoma county. It is rare that there be this many is such a small total area.
Which of the area’s wineries produced the wine that topped the French wines in 1973 to set Napa and Sonoma on the world wine making stage?
Sitting in the shadow of volcanic Mount St. Helena, the Chateau Montelena produced the Chardonnay that stormed the proverbial Bastille of French wine superiority. The winemaker at Chateau Montelena at the time was the now famous Croatian immigrant Michel Grgich who later founded his own winery, Grgich Hills, with the help of the Hills Brothers coffee family.
- Can you name two of the famous movie making families with wineries in Napa Valley?
Producer and Director Frances Ford Coppola purchased the famed Inglenook Winery in 1975 with profits from his Godfather movies. Walt Disney’s oldest daughter and her husband Ron Miller, once President of the Disney Company and a film Producer, built Silverado Winery about the same time. Both have been very successful in the wine business.
- What vineyard in the Napa and Sonoma area has the most land under grape production?
In 1968 when Eugene Trefethen, who helped construct such projects at the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Brides and the Hoover and Shasta dams retired, he and his wife purchase six small farms and the ram shackled 19th Century Eshcol Winery. Together it created a 600 –acre wine estate, the largest in the area which they named the Trefethen Winery. While intending only to grow and sell grapes to other wineries, their son changed all that to also produce prized wines. The winery’s 1976 Chardonnay earned “Best Chardonnay in the World” honors at the 1979 Gault Millau World wine Olympics in Paris. Many more awards followed.
If you knew at least eight correct answers out of the ten, consider yourself a wine connoisseur. If you want to visit all the sites listed above, just download the SelfTour Napa & Sonoma GPS Guided Driving Tour App and go!
