Champagne Blend Marsala Red Bordeaux United States Oregon Willamette Valley

The sparkling wines of Champagne have been revered by wine drinkers for hundreds of years, and even today they maintain their reputation for excellence of flavor and character, and are consistently associated with quality, decadence, and a cause for celebration. Their unique characteristics are partly due to the careful blending of a small number of selected grape varietals, most commonly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. These grapes, blended in fairly equal quantities, give the wines of Champagne their wonderful flavors and aromas, with the Pinot Noir offering length and backbone, and the Chardonnay varietal giving its acidity and dry, biscuity nature. It isn't unusual to sometimes see Champagne labeled as 'blanc de blanc', meaning it is made using only Chardonnay varietal grapes, or 'blanc de noir', which is made solely with Pinot Noir.

Marsala is a well known fortified wine from Italy’s largest island, Sicily. A largely misunderstood and undervalued fortified wine, it is most commonly associated with its sweet variety - usually used as a cooking wine - although the finest dry Masalas are able to stand up to more revered, similar wines such as Sherry and Madeira. Marsala has been made in Sicily since the mid 18th century, and it grew wildly popular around Europe as sailors introduced it to port towns across the continent. Marsala wine has a beautiful set of flavors, most typically including apricot, tamarind, vanilla and tobacco, making it a delightfully intense treat when served as a sipping wine.



Marsala wine comes in several different varieties, and most of them are a world away from the sweet wines used in sauces and chicken dishes. Amber, golden and ruby versions of Masala are produced, from a range of different native grape varietals, and many of the finest are aged for over ten years to achieve a fascinating set of complex flavors and a remarkably smooth finish. It is usually made from the Grillo, Inzolia, Damaschino and Catarratto white grapes, although the ruby Masala wines uses typical Sicilian red varietals such as Nero d’Avola and Calabrese, among others.

There are few regions in the world with stricter regulations in regards to wine production and grape varietals than those found in Bordeaux, France. Here, in the home of the world's finest wines, the type and quality of grapes used is of utmost importance, and the legendary wineries which work on the banks of the Gironde river have mastered the careful art of juice blending to find the perfect balance for their produce. Whilst there are six 'official' Bordeaux grapes, the two key varietals for almost every fine Bordeaux wine are Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and with good reason. Whilst Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are renowned for their acidity and astringency, strong fruit and spice flavors and full body, Merlot grapes are notably rounded, soft, fleshy and lighter on tannin. The combination of these two varietals, along with a small percentage of (commonly) Petit Verdot or Cabernet Franc, is the perfect balancing act – the two grape varietals cancel out each others weaker points, and accentuate all that is good about the other.

Of all the New World wine countries, perhaps the one which has demonstrated the most flair for producing high quality wines - using a combination of traditional and forward-thinking contemporary methods - has been the United States of America. For the past couple of centuries, the United States has set about transforming much of its suitable land into vast vineyards, capable of supporting a wide variety of world-class grape varietals which thrive on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines. Of course, we immediately think of sun-drenched California in regards to American wines, with its enormous vineyards responsible for the New World's finest examples of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot based wines, but many other states have taken to viticulture in a big way, with impressive results. Oregon, Washington State and New York have all developed sophisticated and technologically advanced wine cultures of their own, and the output of U.S wineries is increasing each year as more and more people are converted to their produce.

The beautiful state of Oregon has, over the past few decades, become increasingly well known and respected for its wine industry, with several small but significant wineries within the state receiving world wide attention for the quality of their produce. Whilst the first vineyards within Oregon were planted in the 1840s, the state's wine industry didn't really take off until the 1960s, when several wine producers from California discovered that the cooler regions of the state were ideal for cultivating various fine grape varietals. Today, Oregon has over four hundred and fifty wineries in operation, the vast majority of which are used for the production of wines made from Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir varietal grapes, both of which thrive in the valleys and mountainsides which characterise the landscape of the state.

The beautiful wine region of Willamette Valley is located in Oregon, one of the main wine producing states of the USA. As in much of Oregon, Willamette Valley benefits enormously from the long, hot summers the state enjoys, and the mineral rich soils which typify the wine regions found there. Willamette Valley has built up a powerful reputation over the past few decades as one of the New World's leading producers of high quality, flavorful and characterful Pinot Noir wines, as the grapes of the Pinot Noir vine thrive particularly well in the region's climatic conditions. Willamette Valley is a fascinating wine region, and is a fine representative for the state of Oregon. Innovative techniques and wine making methods are fairly commonplace there, and the overall produce of the region seems to get better each year.