The Significance of Fruit In Red Wines
Written By: Nick Gorevic on Thu, Nov 6th 2008
We've been over fruit, minerality and spice in white wines, and now it's time to look at fruit, earth and spice in red wines. Earth represents the same thing as minerality, but it's just more common to refer to those qualities as earthiness when discussing red wines. This article will deal specifically with fruit in red wines, and I'll move on to earth and spice in the coming weeks.
Fruit in red wines can generally be divided into red fruit and black fruit. Red fruits would include red cherries, raspberries, and strawberries, while black fruits include dark cherries, blackberries, cassis, or plums. As I told you about white wine fruit flavors, a lot of these fine distinctions become subjective at a certain point and are great fun for sommeliers and other wine geeks, but not really necessary if you just want to know what you like. But distinguishing between red and black fruit is pretty easy, and will be helpful when you're deciding what you like about a wine.
When you're first starting out, see if you can tell if the wine tastes more like a lighter red type fruit, or a darker black type one. Does the wine taste more sour, like a sour cherry, or is it more fruity and sweet, like a strawberry? I mentioned sweetness when I talked about white wines, but it's worth mentioning again. There is a distinction between fruitiness and sweetness. When I say the wine might taste like a sweeter strawberry, I'm not saying that there is actually any sugar in the wine. It's just the semblance of sweetness. A lot of people come into my store and ask me for a wine that's sweeter than another, and most of the time they really just mean they want something fruitier. It's pretty hard to actually find a sweet red wine, but if you want to do a comparison, you could try some port, and compare with any other red wine to see what sweetness feels like on the tip of your tongue.
So, do you like fruity red wines? If you want to decide for yourself, I'll give you a simple way to find one, and I'll teach you a little lesson at the same time. Fruity red wines generally come from New world areas of the world, and are the less expensive bottles you'll find. Let's take a look at why that is. New world is distinguished from old world, or basically Europe, mainly including France, Italy and Spain. And it's really just France. You can find some example of non-fruity old world styled wines in Italy and Spain, but a lot of those styles were originally copied from French styles, or were even started by French winemakers who had emigrated to the other areas. The classic new world wine areas include the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, and Argentina.
Now why do wines from France have so much less fruit? The simple answer is the climate. Most of the wine-growing areas in France tend to have generally poor growing conditions. This can actually be a good thing where wine is concerned, as grapes vines produce much more interesting fruit when they are stressed. By contrast, in California, where the sun shines constantly and you can grow absolutely anything with great ease, the grapes get very ripe, and become much fruitier than in France.
This is not to say that all New World wines are very fruity, There are some areas, some of them very small microclimates within generally warmer areas, that produce a similar style to France. Or sometimes the vineyards may be located at altitude, where it's much cooler, especially at night. It's generally much more expensive to farm these areas. High altitude sites are more difficult to maintain, and cooler areas will tend to yield much lower amounts of grapes, which means you need even more land to make the same amount of wine.
So, if you pick yourself out a 10-15 dollar bottle of red wine from California, you're pretty sure to find that the wine will be fairly fruity. For the purposes of this exercise, you should ask the wine store worker for an unoaked or lightly oaked example of one of these wines, so you don't confuse any spice with the fruit. See if you can distinguish the color of the fruit, red or black. Maybe the fruit tastes like it's dried or raisinated a bit? Maybe it tastes like fresh strawberries? Try several bottles and see if you can find one you like. If you find you like fruity red wines, you're in luck, because they are generally much less expensive! If you find the fruit overwhelming and cloying, get ready for the next column, when I'll discuss earthiness in red wines.
Happy drinking!
