Red wine

[Albion]

No offense, but if he wants to get some really good red wine he should look a little bit further south.

Ours have won awards, I'm not sure about the Danes. He needs Nordic wine! the more northern the better!

And I agree with ficuscarica that grapes need to be grown in a very arid condition to be good. I would think that grapes grown in colder climates would be very tart.

Well apparently not:

It is possible to grow grapes and make good wine in England and Wales but it is not easy - the U.K. is at the absolute fringe of the grape growing regions of the world. ...

The curious thing about the vine is that it actually produces the best wine at the limit of its possibilities. In very hot countries it produces quantity but not quality, in cool countries it can produce quality but not so much quantity. So in England, whilst disappointments will be many and quantities will generally be small, quality can be outstanding and can equal or beat the best of any other wine-producing country in the world.

Grapes don't need arid conditions, they need a lot of water. What they need is strong sunlight to ripen and a long growing season.
The south of England just about meets that criteria, France and Germany do too but arid parts of Spain often have to irrigate vineyards.

[ficuscarica]

@Albion: Good red wine in Germany and France is only grown in the latitude around Heidelberg or Paris and than southwards. Further north you need really steep hills to produce good red wine, because of the lack of sun and summer warmth. But even Cornwall is farther north. I think if you want to grow wine in England white wine is the better choice. However, maybe there are some areas with a really nice microclimate where red wine is worth a try. I could imagine it to work at least in South England when the vineyard is placed on a steep, hot hill.

[The Ripper]

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[Riki]

IMHO Romance members won't recommend you anything good.
Better ask Padre, he is Georgian, so he will recommend you a good Georgian wine and it will be ex-Soviet, thus more familiar to your taste.

[The Ripper]

That's not the punchline.

[Albion]

@Albion: Good red wine in Germany and France is only grown in the latitude around Heidelberg or Paris and than southwards. Further north you need really steep hills to produce good red wine, because of the lack of sun and summer warmth. But even Cornwall is farther north. I think if you want to grow wine in England white wine is the better choice. However, maybe there are some areas with a really nice microclimate where red wine is worth a try. I could imagine it to work at least in South England when the vineyard is placed on a steep, hot hill.

There's no shortage of hills, the geology of the south east basically mirrors northern France.



Most of the vineyards do grow white grapes, only a few grow reds and these are usually hybrids with the muscadines - blasphemy!

Personally I see no problem with using hybrids in marginal areas to produce table grapes or maybe even cheap wines.
If climates become warmer over Europe as people predict then England may not be at the frontiers in the future. The hybrid growing would perhaps move to Scotland or Northern England with larger scale Vitis Vinifera in the south and Midlands.

If the climates did migrate this much then it would be interesting to see where Germany's production centred, if it migrated north and if countries like Belgium would develop more of an industry.

On a side note, Vitis Vinifera doesn't suffer as badly from phylloxera here, partly due to the lack of hosts (vineyards are few and far between) and partly because the country isn't as suitable for them. Often at garden centres they're sold on their own roots because of that.

[ficuscarica]

@Albion: That´s interesting. Look at this map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Uk_topo_en.jpg

Especially around Exeter and Plymouth there are hills that could provide good conditions on their sun-exposed sides. This is also the warmest region in England. Now find a place with a good, warm ground and maybe some good white wine can be produced. The mild winters could allow some cottage and windmill palms to grow in the vineyard. Some people with the right vision could really produce a good wine and form a beautiful and unique landscape. It´s mainly about courage and passion.
I think hot, steep hills with warm stones are really the key to a good English wine. The difference between the average temperature in July in Southern England and here is as big as the difference between here and central Italy. This has to be compensated by choosing really warm places for the wine to grow - as steep as possible. The long autumn in the oceanic English climate in England could be helpful, too. But octobers would have to be dry and sunny. I don´t know whether they are in England.

As the climate gets hotter especially the northern German wine growers, who focus on Riesling, will get problems, because Riesling doesn´t like the hot summers we now have. But that´s not too big a problem, because red wine gets more and more popular and they can gradually exchange their varieties.
Here in my region we mostly grow Pinot Noir and other Pinots, which don´t have a problem with the hot summers and will still produce a great wine when the climate gets warmer. But the changing climate encourages wine growers to try growing more mediterranean wine like Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. More and more vineyards have those varieties.

I can imagine wines like Riesling, Chardonnay or Auxerrois to be successfully grown in England, if the right, warm spots are found.

[Peyrol]

http://www.wine-searcher.com/regions-langhe

http://www.snooth.com/region/italy/piemonte/langhe/

http://www.giacosa.it/pagine/eng/fam...he_roero.lasso

[PetiteParisienne]

There's a gorgeous Californian cabernet sauvignon called Liberte. I make sure to buy a few bottles every time I visit the US:

http://tjswinenotes.com/2011/01/10/f...n-paso-robles/

[Foxy]

Some red wines with which I got wonderfully drunken:

Rosso del Duca (Italian)
Citra (Italian)
Montepulciano d'Abruzzo (Italian)
Negroamaro (Italian)
Zaccagnini (Italian)

Some rosè:

Mateus (Portuguese)
Cerasuolo Cantina Tollo (Italian)