winemeister

Wine is usually known primarily under either the region the grapes were grown in (names like [Napa Valley], Bordeaux or Valpolicella) or the type of grape used to make the wine (as in [Chardonnay], [Merlot] or [Malbec]). As a rule of thumb, [Europe] tends to emphasize area of origin and use the names of the regions as the marketing names. This is reinforced by the European Union's labeling laws.

Until recently not well known in the US or Europe, Argentina is the largest wine producer in the southern hemisphere. It's diverse mix of microclimates makes for an equally interesting mix of wines and flavors. Argentina is best known for the strongly flavored red Malbec, but has plenty of other wines in its various regions.

History

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The editorial team

Welcome to Winemeister. We will use this section as a blog run by the editorial board to keep everybody informed about the progress with the winemeister site. As of this week, we have added some initial content in the wine guide section. We also opened a single forum on French wine as an experiment. We plan on adding more forums and expanding the content very soon.

Stay tuned and let us know what you think! You can post comments here or send an email to the editorial team at editor@winemeister.com.

Like all of former West Germany's wine regions, Franken is located along one of the tributaries of the Rhine river, in this case the river Main that runs from East to West across northern Bavaria. The Main's steep banks and similarly shaped close-by hills make up the characteristic wine growing hills ("Weinberge") of the region.

Possibly the world's most famous region for growing red wine, Bordeaux takes its name from the largest city in the area. It is located on the French Atlantic coast just north of the Pyrenee mountains and the border to Spain. The wine growing region known as Bordeaux straddles two departments - the Gironde and the Dordogne. It's wine growing region is located along the Gironde, Dordogne and Garonne rivers in the south-western portion of France.

Bordeaux contains a total of 36 officially named growing regions:

Medoc 

Of the three top wine producing countries (France  and Italy  being the other two), Spain has the lowest production in hl per year, but the highest amount of area under vines (see statistics  page). Its low productivity is mostly caused by the extreme conditions in most of Spain's wine growing regions. Central Spain is notorious for its water problems and only some of the northern regions get sufficient amounts of water to guarantee stable yields.

French wines are usually known by a combination of their regional names of origin like Bordeaux or "Cote du Rhone", territory names controlled by the [INAO] like "[St. Emilion]", "[Medoc]" or "[Paulliac]". Further identifications found on the label are the names of the vineyard or producer, the vintage and the classification. See [How To Read a French Label] for details.

Link to the old information: http://www.winemeister.com/confluence/display/wine