Wierd Wine Regions

by Chris Hambleton from Champagne Tuesdays

You know where good wine comes from right? Normal places like France, Spain, Australia and Chile.

At least with these places you know what you're getting, quality products at reasonable prices, so there's no need to go off and buy something out of the ordinary now is there? Wrong! Top quality wine is made in some very strange places and even those we thought were relatively normal are sometimes stranger than you might think.

Port
Take Port for example. We all know Port, that rich highly alcoholic stuff that we have at Christmas to finally tip us over the edge into a turkey-stuffed afternoon slumber. You all know what a vineyard looks like - gently rolling slopes with neat lines of vines growing peacefully on rich soils. Not in the Douro. Instead of a spade and a trowel or two, the Portugese prefer more direct methods. The thing is, there is very little soil in the Douro vineyards, but lots and lots of rock. So you take a JCB and a few pounds of high explosive and go about blowing holes in the hillside until you have enough cracks to plant vines in. Instant vineyard.

Complexity
The Portugese are not alone in their intrepid efforts, take the poor Germans for example. Their best vineyards are along the Mosel river valley, incredibly steep sided and full of slate. Yet you will find vineyards clinging to the precipice and pickers scrambling goat-like among them to bring in the harvest. Why bother? Complexity is why. Get a flat plain, in the sun, put on some good compost and water thoroughly, you'll get healthy vines and a big crop of fruit. Easy. Now you turn the grape juice into wine, the result will be something that tastes dull, flat and uninteresting, it may be fruity and alcoholic but it will lack character. Contrast this with grapes from vines that have to struggle and the results are very different.

Lebanon
Now we've established that some people will go to extraordinary lengths to provide us with something to go with our meals, let me introduce to you perhaps the weirdest place to produce world-class wine, Lebanon. Yes Lebanon. In this war-ravaged country lives a man by the name of Serge Hochar, a legendary winemaker who produces the incomparable Chateau Musar. One thing to stress about this wine is that it is what we call a 'marmite wine' - either you love it or you hate it, there is no middle ground. If you enjoy Bordeaux then you will probably like Musar, if you prefer lighter reds you will probably hate it.

Having avoided the shellfire and fighting in the Bekaa Valley, Chateau Musar has flourished and the older vintages are much sought after as it is a wine that lives for a very long time. Full bodied, rich and dark it is definitely a food wine, the richer the food the better. Don't be put off by the smell, you might get a faint waft of nail varnish remover, that is just the nature of the beast. This wine gets sent back more than any other in restaurants as people don't know what it should smell like.

Canada
From hot and dangerous we go to cold and peaceful, to Canada. Better known for skis and syrup than Semillon and Sauvignon, the Canadians have got themselves a fantastic wine industry. Yes it is cool there, but that's a good thing, promoting complexity in their wines. In fact the Canadian success story started because of their cold weather. One of the greatest sweet wines is called Eiswein, made in Germany from grapes left on the vines until the first frosts of winter. The incredible concentration of the liquid in the grapes makes for an incredibly intense flavour. Now the Germans cannot guarantee frosts at the right time every year, the Canadians however can. They started making IceWine, Mission Hill and Inniskillin are two of the best retailing for around £40. Then they moved on to normal still wines, both red and white.

Greece
That's reds, now on to whites and that much-maligned country, Greece. Think Greek wine, think retsina. Think 'Domestica'. Think Bleargh! Think again. Think Santorini. A glorious light white made on the island of Santorini, one of the hidden gems of Europe's vineyards. If you want a light, refreshing, citrussy white with a bit more to it than the usual - it is a great seafood match, shellfish in particular. It's made from a grape called Assyrtiko, an indigenous variety which you will probably never have heard of. No whiff of pine disinfectant here, just clean, fruit aromas and flavours. Incidentally, the reason that Retsina smells more like domestos than wine is because it is aged in pine barrels, picking up the flavour from the resin. Certain producers have been known to simply add pine resin to a stainless steel vat, so beware.

Galicia
For my final suggestion we're going to stay in Europe and recall the old saying 'the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. Not true, it falls mainly on Galicia, a small region in North-western Spain containing the vineyards of Rias Biaxas. Here you find assorted lunatic Spaniards trying desperately to grow Albarino grapes while dodging the showers. Remarkably, they seem to make a decent job of it and the results are superb. Albarino is seen as Spain's best white grape, you may not have heard of this because production is so small due to the poor weather. The good news is that this lack of fame makes for an affordable wine. I have only had one poor bottle of Albarino and that was bought in a restaurant, those in the shops are excellent. It is slightly off-dry, peachy, bit of apricot and some lime in there too. Great with seafood and perfect for char-grilled fish or chicken.

This is just a selection of the out of the way regions that exist. We're expecting great things from Tasmania and not to mention our own fair shores with English sparkling going from strength to strength. Some Italians leave their grapes in barns at the top of hills with the doors open to dry them out as part of the winemaking process in Amarone, and the French, Germans and Hungarians all let their grapes rot in some regions in order to make sweet wines. It's all a bit strange, but happily it seems to work.