37 - WineSpeed by Karen MacNeil

January 4, 2019

37

Value (in millions of U.S. dollars) of grapes in California’s Lake County alone that were rejected this past fall because of suspected damage from smoke taint. The taint can occur when grapes still hanging on the vine are exposed to prolonged intense smoke. Luckily, in both 2017 and 2018, the enormously destructive fires in California and Oregon occurred after most (but not all) grapes had been harvested.

Which of the following grapes grown in Tejo (one of the major Portuguese wine regions) is white?

A. Casteláo

B. Trincadeira

C. Fernáo Pires

D. Touriga Nacional

C.

Fernáo Pires is Portugal’s most planted white wine grape, grown throughout central and southern Portugal but most notably in Tejo just northeast of Lisbon. The variety makes wines with a spicy aromatic character and delicate exotic fruit notes. It is known as Maria Gomes in Bairrada, the Portuguese wine region about 50 miles south of Oporto.

“Wine is earth’s answer to the sun.”

—Margaret Fuller,
American journalist
(1810 – 1850)

Get WineSpeed

Join tens of thousands of other wine lovers. Get each week’s edition of WineSpeed delivered to your inbox every Friday. It’s fast. It’s free. It’s the smartest way to stay up to speed on wine.