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Vintage: 2012
2012 has, so far been a positive year for wineries around the world. While it may be a little too early to speak of the wines being made in the northern hemisphere, European and North American wineries have already begun reporting that their harvesting season has been generally very good, and are predicting to continue with the kind of successes they saw in 2011. However, 2012 has been something of a late year for France, due to unpredictable weather throughout the summer, and the grapes were ripening considerably later than they did in 2011 (which was, admittedly, an exceptionally early year). French wineries are claiming, though, that this could well turn out to be advantageous, as the slow ripening will allow the resulting wines to express more flavour and features of the terroir they are grown in.
The southern hemisphere has seen ideal climatic conditions in most of the key wine producing countries, and Australia and New Zealand particularly had a superb year, in particular with the Bordeaux varietal grapes that grow there and which love the humidity these countries received plenty of. Also enjoying a fantastic year for weather were wineries across Argentina and Chile, with the Mendoza region claiming that 2012 will be one of their best vintages of the past decade. Similar claims are being made across the Chilean wine regions, where Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon had an especially good year. These two grape varietals also produced characterful wines on the coastal regions of South Africa this year.
Varietal: Riesling
Riesling grapes are very rarely blended with others in the development of wines, and for good reason. These pale grapes which originated in the cool Rhine Valley of Germany are notable for their 'transparency' of flavor, which allows the characteristics of their terroir to shine through in wonderful ways. The result of this is a wine which carries a wide range of interesting flavors quite unlike those found in other white wines, finished off with the distinctively floral perfume Riesling supplies so well. Many wineries in Germany and elsewhere tend to harvest their Riesling grapes very late – often as late as January – in order to make the most of their natural sweetness. Other methods, such as encouraging the noble rot fungus, help the Riesling grape varietal present some truly unique and exciting flavors in the glass, and the variety of wines this varietal can produce mean it is one of the finest and most interesting available anywhere.
Country: Canada
In Canada, wines are produced in many different parts of the country, and there are major vineyards everywhere from Ontario, British Columbia, southern Quebec and Nova Scotia. Canadian wineries have been producing wine for over two hundred years now, and the Canadian wine industry has seen significant development and expansion over the past couple of decades, when the unique attributes of the country's produce began to find popularity overseas. The most widely admired Canadian wines are ice wines, which are made using grapes which have been allowed to freeze during the early frosts. This process intensifies the flavors and sweetness of the grapes, resulting in highly characterful wines with distinctive properties, and works extremely well with the grape varietals which flourish in the cooler climate of the country.