The Boldest Red Wines In The World

Red wines range in style and taste because there are hundreds of different red wine varieties. On one side of the spectrum, we have grapes like Pinot Noir. These wines taste softer with lighter color. As we move up the range, we find grapes with more color and more intense tastes. And finally, on the far side of the spectrum, we find the boldest red wines in the world. And for those of us who love dramatic, rich-tasting wines, these are the wines we tend to gravitate towards. So what makes these wines unlike the rest? And how do we find more of them? Let's dive into what makes bold red wine special and what grapes produce them and where they grow. And then we'll taste one to see how it expresses itself in the glass. How do you know it's a full-bodied red wine? If there's one clue to look for on a wine label without knowing anything else about the wine, it's the alcohol level. In fact, you don't even need a label to tell you. You just need to swirl. The tears that form on the sides of your glass after you swirl give us a clue to a wine's elevated alcohol level. Wines starting at 14% alcohol by volume to about 16.5 are as full-bodied as they get. And as humans, we taste alcohol as bitter, sweet, spicy, and oily all at the same time. Alcohol adds more body to full-bodied wine. Then the next important trait is something that's rarely, if ever, listed on a label. And it's tannins. This right here is pure unadulterated tannin. Tannins are polyphenols that naturally occur in seeds, bark, wood, leaves, and fruit skins of plants. What do they taste like? Yuck! Of course, tannins are complex. Tannins from seeds and skins of bold red wine grapes taste bitter and astringent. But when you age wines in oak barrels, it morphs these grippy grape tannins into smoother, more velvety tannins. So wood is good. Actually, it's field trip time. I wanna show you some of these full-bodied red wines at the wine store. One of the things that all of these wines have in common is they all come from warm climates. Full-bodied red wines grow in warm climates because you need all that sunshine and heat to ripen the grapes and to produce that high level of polyphenols in the grape varieties and lots of sunshine to produce sugars that produces high alcohol in a full-bodied red wine. All right, check this out. This is a Tinta Jorge, aka Tempranillo, coming from the Douro Valley in Portugal. And do we know if it's big enough? Well, if we check the alcohol level, it's 14.5%. This is gonna be a big wine. All right, and check this out. This is a grape variety called Tenat, which is also one of the boldest red wines that you can find, and it's coming from Uruguay and if you look at the alcohol by volume, it's 14%. All right, I think I found another one. This, Montefalco Sagrantino, the grape is Sagrantino and this is another big wine coming in at 15% alcohol by volume from Umbria in Italy. You know what? I actually have a super full-bodied red wine at home, so let's head back to the studio. This exploration of Petit Saraz brought to you with the support of Bogle Family Vineyards, enabling us to try a unique heritage variety. One of the things we do to measure how bold a red wine is is to measure its polyphenol content. Yep, we're talking about tannins again. Gamay, for example, is low. It has around 1,100 milligrams per liter of polyphenols. Cabernet, on the other hand, is much higher. Even a low-quality commercial Cabernet will have about 1,700 milligrams per liter of polyphenols. And the good stuff, the really high-end bottles have upwards of 3,000 milligrams per liter. Now, Petit Saraz is in a world of its own. It's up there with the highest level of wine grapes anywhere and clocking in around 3,000 to 4,000 milligrams per liter of polyphenols. So Petit Saraz, is this just little Saraz? Not exactly. It's actually a cross between Saraz and an almost extinct French variety called Pelorcin that was created in 1880 by a botanist named François Dureff. And since Monsieur Dureff made it, it is called Dureff. But since it more or less grows only in California where you can find it in places like California, Central Valley, and Lodi, and Sonoma, and Napa Valley, I think you can call it as the Californians do it. And they call it Petit Saraz. Okay, so now that we have some background on this wine, let's see how it performs in the glass. Taking a look at the color, whoa, this is a deep opaque purple color. That richness of color is coming from the high levels of anthocyanin and tannin in this wine, which causes co-pigmentation where you literally cannot see through your hand in the glass. Now, looking at the side of the glass here, we can see a lot of tears forming. Those tears are an indication, again, of that elevated alcohol that's undoubtedly in this wine. Let's give it a sniff. Whoa, interesting. Okay, so I get lots of flavors right off the bat. Blueberry, blackberry, boysenberry. There's a touch of black pepper. There's these whiffs of vanilla, milk chocolate, baking spices, almost like allspice, yeah. Okay, so what's going on in this wine? Those blue and black fruit flavors are really common for full-bodied red wines like this one. They tend to go in the dark fruit realm. Now, that black pepper note, that's really specific to Petit Saraz, coming from an aromatic compound called rotundum, which we can also find in black pepper and in Syrah. Those other notes, chocolate, vanilla, baking spices, coconut, those are all coming from how this wine was aged in Elevage and it was aged in oak. It aged for 12 months in American oak. And American oak tends to impart more oak flavors than French oak because the grain is whiter, making it more porous. So this wine had a lot of oak treatment. Let's give it a taste. So this wine is dry, but I wanna talk about what else is going on in the glass, the tannins, the acidity, and the alcohol. For acidity, the pH level of this wine is 3.74. This is how much we have to buffer the wine as it ages. And for a red wine, this is middle of the road. A lower pH would indicate a very age-worthy wine, but it would also taste very sour. A higher pH would mean it's not as age-worthy, but it would taste also a lot softer. Technically, this wine can age based on its stats, but I'm not sure that I would want to. It's gonna lose those magical blueberry notes and become a little bit more meaty and leafy over time, and I'm not sure that that is exactly how I wanna enjoy that wine. I think it's perfect now. So the tannins are high, but they're not bitter. They create this rich mouthfeel, this gripping sensation that you can feel when you touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth. And the winemaker is doing a lot here to mitigate the astringency in the wine, including oak aging, to reduce what would normally be a very, very grippy wine. So it has high tannins, but it's smooth. Also, the alcohol level helps with that too. So let's talk about alcohol. Most commercial wines clock in around 13.5% alcohol by volume and while this wine is only one degree more, it does a lot. The ethanol carries the aromas in this wine, making it smell more aromatic and intense. On the palate, ethanol adds this oily, spicy richness that helps soften the bitterness and astringency in the tannins. And then on the finish, you can feel the heat extend the flavor. It actually makes this wine taste even bigger. And because there's so much going on in this glass, you tend to drink it a bit slower, which is good because it is a higher alcohol wine. We covered a lot today on full-bodied red wines, but if you back out, how confident on wine are you in general? This next video is gonna cover the details, the foundation of the five major types of wines to know, so check it out. And until next time and next wine, keep tasting. Peace out.