Wine tasting: Yaluma "Y Series" Viognier, Australia, 2015.

Hey, long time no see! For new readers who need a catch-up, I'm in the process this year of fulfilling a New Year's resolution to finally get better educated about wine; and the first tasting project I'm doing as part of this education is to do thoughtful tastings of the world's twenty most popular types of grapes, taking them on chromatically from the darkest reds to the lightest whites. I've been at it since January, which means I've now gotten through Syrah/Shiraz, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chianti (Sangiovese), Merlot, (Red) Zinfandel, Garnacha/Grenache, Beaujolais (Gamay), Cabernet Franc, White Zinfandel, Gewürztraminer and Chardonnay; and after a three-week hiatus I'm now ready to take on my 14th wine in this series, the obscure Viognier (pronounced vee-OWN-yay).

Once a much more popular wine than it currently is, most believe that Viognier goes all the way back to Croatia and the birth of wine in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago; although definitely we have records of the Romans bringing this as one of the first grape types to France when they initially established the "fine wine" tradition there in the early AD years. On the plus side, low acidity makes this wine lush and smooth like a Chardonnay, but with it being an "aromatic" wine it also usually contains a lot more subtle aromas of flowers and fruits than many other whites. (In fact, this is often added to harsh reds such as Syrah to make the resulting "red blend" both softer in taste and better-smelling.) But on the minus side, it's one of the fussier grapes in existence, a fruit that needs a long growing season but in a place where it never gets too hot, that is prone to mildew, that has low and unpredictable yields, and that gets oily and flat if picked too late in the year.

Although once commonly grown in France's Rhône Valley (in fact, to this day it's still the only grape officially allowed in that region's Condrieu wine, one of the few French "luxury" wines deliberately meant to be drank soon after bottling), Viognier actually got very close to going extinct altogether, from a combination of that country's huge phylloxera plague in the 1800s and then this grape's vineyards being right at the heart of the Western Front during World War One. In the 1960s and '70s, though, this was one of the grapes that helped fuel America's rise into world-class winemaking (since it does well in moderate temperatures, this is one of the more common grapes used in wineries outside of the west coast -- never forget that all 50 states in the US have at least one local winery, not just California, Oregon and Washington); and in more recent years Viognier has also become a popular choice in the exploding wine industries in Australia, New Zealand and South America.

In fact, Australia is the home of the Viognier I tried for this tasting, a company called Yalumba which is that country's oldest family-owned winery (dating back to 1849) and one of only four wineries on the planet which makes its own oak barrels. (They have a beautiful website as well; I encourage you to check it out.) You can read my detailed tasting notes below; but in general this was partly like how I was expecting it to be (so fragrant, for example, that the smell immediately hits you like a punch right when you open the bottle), but partly a surprise from what I was expecting (the aroma wasn't as sweet as I heard typical Viogniers are, but the taste wasn't as dry). This was one of my favorite wines so far of this entire series, and as always I want to thank the smart and friendly staff of my local Binny's for helping me pick it out.

Yalumba Family Vignerons

“The Y Series” Viognier, 2015

Angaston, South Australia

14.1% ABV

$13

Look: A pale yellow the hue of straw, easily transparent to the light.

Smell: True to this grape's reputation, a powerful aroma that hits you the moment you open the bottle. Not as sweet a smell as I was expecting, with strong hints of lemon and honey.

Taste: A beautifully thick taste in the mouth, with the distinctive oily sensation on the middle of the tongue that comes with this varietal. Although often known for its dryness, this particular brand is semi-sweet, but with the kind of perfumy bite like you get when putting a flower petal in your mouth. Easy to see why this is a little-known secret favorite among wine experts; it has all the good qualities of a Chardonnay, but is also more delicate, more complex, and more fragrant. One of my favorite whites so far this year.

After a Full Glass: After a full glass paired with grilled salmon and broccoli, I was surprised to discover that this comes off as even sweeter than before, and pleased to find that its taste doesn't overwhelm the food at all. I'm willing to bet that this goes REALLY well with spicy food.

Head-to-head wine tasting, Gewurztraminer: "The Furst" vs Paul Cluver.

Greetings, oenophiles! It's week 12 of my first big wine-education project of 2016 (inspired, to remind you, by a New Year's resolution to finally learn more about the subject), in which I'm trying the world's twenty most popular types of wine in chromatic order, from the darkest reds to the lightest whites. So far this year I've gotten through Syrah/Shiraz, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chianti (Sangiovese), Merlot, (Red) Zinfandel, Garnacha/Grenache, Beaujolais (Gamay), Cabernet Franc and White Zinfandel; and while technically the next wine on the intensity list to try is Chardonnay, I just got done trying one of the other most popular types of wine in the US, the White Zin previously mentioned, so I thought I'd take a break between the two and slip in a much more obscure wine that I've never tried before, Gewurztraminer.

And why is this obscure? After all, it's known as one of the 18 "noble" grapes first designated in the Renaissance, one of those fabled varietals that's been grown since at least the birth of Christ, and that was one of the founding grapes of the "fine wine" movement in France during the Roman Empire. But it's simply out of trendy popularity as of the exact times I'm writing; the Old World (i.e. European) version is delicate and sweet like perfume, which is not currently in style in our "bold reds all the time" age, and it's mostly known as a Germanic type of wine which is also currently out of fashion in the early 21st century. Now add the fact that, much like Pinot Noir, it's a fussy grape whose growth season can go randomly wrong in all kinds of ways (Gewurztraminer vines bud early, and thus are vulnerable to late frosts, and need dry summers with cold nights to ripen properly); and also add the fact that it's hardly grown anywhere anymore, constituting something like only 4 percent of all the wine made on the planet on any given year, and you can see why it's currently easy to overlook when at your local store.

That's too bad, though, because this is a perfect example of why Old World fans claim to like European wines so much; it's a beautifully subtle drink that's heavily influenced by the terrior surrounding it (including what kind of soil it was grown in, and literally what kinds of produce was in the field next to it), unique from most other whites because of being what's called an "aromatic" wine, meaning that it kind of smells like flowers and that you can tell that literally across the room from the bottle in question. Its traditional popularity is tied more to the geographical region of the Alps than it is to any political boundaries; so in other words, Gewurztraminer is mostly well-known in eastern France, southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the northern tip of Italy, and trailing off into the Balkan areas of Croatia and Slovenia, which used to be the extreme western border of Mesopotamia, the ancient region where wine was first invented 20,000 years ago, which is why this particular grape goes so far back in European winemaking history.

Out of all those areas, though, the one place in Europe most known for Gewurztraminer is the Alsace region of France; for those who don't know, this is the eastern tip of that country that butts up against Germany and Switzerland, a land that has exchanged ownership between France and Germany something like 50 times since the Roman era, and thus is this wonderfully perfect cultural blend between the two. That's where I picked up one of the bottles of tonight's tastings, from a winery known as Les Vignerons Reunis de Kientzheim-Kaysersberg; interestingly, the winery itself has no website or other online presence, and like New World wines markets itself through a trendy brand name ("The Furst") and a hipster label by visual artist Dan Steffan, and when a European winery does all this it's a pretty clear sign that they're not taken very seriously in the Old World country where they reside, and that they've decided to instead compete against New World brands for American dollars and mostly export sales. (With this in mind, it's also not surprising that, out of the twenty different types of Alsace Gewurztraminer wines being sold at my neighborhood Binny's, this was literally the only one under $20, with in fact most of the others going in the $75 to $100 range.)

Ah, but! One of the things I've been learning during my research this year is that white wines are much more susceptible to being changed in aroma and taste by the circumstances behind their growth than red wine is; so for at least the next two wines I try (this and Chardonnay), I thought it would be interesting to not only pick up a traditional Old World version but also a New World one from somewhere particularly hot and arid, just to see what kinds of changes I might discover between the two because of it. The New World version I picked up is in fact my second wine from South Africa -- a winery called Paul Cluver, located in a cooler region of the country called Elgin, with an estate that goes all the way back to the late Victorian Age. And I have to say, the cliche about American wine drinkers is true, that we automatically like a wine more when there's an interesting story behind the company that made it; a former beneficiary of apartheid, the enlightened current generation of Cluvers was one of the mentors of the very first black economic empowerment wine brand, Thandi Wines, who has also worked with the South African government to set aside half their large estate to serve as a UN-recognized biosphere (including wandering herds of wild antelope), complete with a 600-seat outdoor amphitheater on the grounds that hosts various popular South African musical groups all summer long. Wow, I want to visit this place!

The head-to-head tastings of these wines did indeed turn out to be remarkably different, so I will leave you today with the detailed tasting notes below. Next week is my tasting of the notoriously crappy Chardonnay, otherwise known as "butter bombs" because of California wineries' tendencies in the 1980s to literally float giant splintered chunks of oak in the juice as it was fermenting; so if you have a recommendation of a particularly great California Chardonnay for me to try, please do drop me a line at ilikejason@gmail.com and let me know!

Les Vignerons Reunis de Kientzheim-Kaysersberg (no website)

“The Furst” Gewurztraminer, 2014

Schlossberg, Alsace, France

13.5% ABV

$15

Look: A clear bright yellow with surprisingly strong legs.

Smell: Befitting its “aromatic wine” status, this has an intensity of smell that hits you all the way across the room when you first open the bottle. It's hard for me to place the aroma, probably because most people compare it to the lychee fruit and I've never had a lychee; it smells sort of weakly citrusy like a grapefruit, but also perfumed like a flower.

Taste: An interestingly unique taste I wasn't expecting; dry despite the perfumy smell, lighter on the tongue than I would've guessed, with the consistency of literally fruit juice and a pleasantly mysterious aspect I have a hard time identifying, almost as if maybe you juiced a watermelon and mixed it with grapes.

Paul Cluver Wines

Gewurztraminer, 2013

Elgin, South Africa

12.0% ABV

$14

Look: Another clear, bright yellow, this time with many bubbles almost like the head of a beer.

Smell: Like the other Gewurtztraminer, a strong aroma that carries across the room, but this time the much more traditional sour/savory smell I usually associate with New World reds like Malbec and Shiraz.

Taste: So incredibly different than the other Gewurtztraminer – bold, strongly reminiscent of passion fruit (think mango), with a thick consistency that leaves a coating in the mouth, and a powerfully strong oak aftertaste that I usually associate with Chardonnay.