[MUSIC] Welcome back, in the previous lesson we discussed Old World versus New World wines. In this lesson we will discuss climate and style. The Old World evokes traditions, long evolution in cultural context, in parallel with local food culture. It evokes history, depth, respect in of wine styles. The New World is often equated with modernity, technological wines. In some minds equated with mass production, modern marketing, greater product, flavor continuity within a particular brand. In other words, who cares what vintage it is, I want it always to taste the same. Rather than, the unique differences that crop up from batch to batch or from year to year. So it's dangerous to strictly stick with these overall impressions, though the flavor of the Old World and the New World, the flavors and techniques of the Old World and the New World are constantly evolving and merging. Of course having stated these simple definitions of Old World and New World, I should quickly follow up with a statement that these are often hotly debated. I've started many an argument in my wine tasting group by saying, okay, we're so critical of New World wines, let's pretend for a moment that the early explorers sailed from New Jersey and discovered Western Europe. Would we criticize their wines for being too lean, too subtle, too acidic, too uninteresting? So when we talk about warm climate viticulture versus cool climate viticulture, we can actually draw a rather useful table with COOL in one column and WARM in the next column. And we can look at the various basic flavor and appearance aspects of wine, thus just look at a few of them for example. In a cool climate, sugar might be difficult to achieve in some years or it might be merely adequate. In a warm climate, sugar is no problem, we can have as much sugar we want. In a cool climate, acidity is rather high, in a colder climate, very high. But it's always medium plus or medium plus plus. In a warmer climate, acid tends to dissipate, acid tends to be digested or rather metabolized as ripening progresses. And so the resulting wines tend to be a little bit lower in acid. There are some other interesting things that we could [LAUGH], say about that with respect to warmer regions in the Old World. But just for now, another aspect is Tannins. It can be rather firm, or sometimes even aggressive in a cool climate, whereas they can be adequate or sometimes barely adequate or even lacking in a warmer or hot climate. What about color? Well, color is a part of that overall world of tannins and phenolics. And it can be rather good in a cooler climate, but in some cases it can be just barely adequate or even a little bit washed out in other climates. In a very cool climate, though, color may fail to develop. What about overall flavors? In a cooler climate and I'm particular to talking about a climate that has good day time, night time temperature alteration. Temperature fluctuation, which we call the diurnal shift, daytime, nighttime shift. The flavor development can be absolutely magnificent and complex. In a warmer climate, flavor development can be adequate, certainly but sometimes a little bit lacking. The comment I was going to make earlier about tannins and color and acids and so forth, just as a sidebar. In the Old World, in warmer climates, balancing complexity is achieved by blending rather than relying on one particular varietal to give you everything you want in a glass of wine. So, one example of white wine type from a cool climate and a warm climate could be Pinot grigio from Northern Italy versus Pinot Gri from a warm Mediterranean climate, let's say California. In the cool climate the Penogresio will be crisper from a high acidity, will have leaner flavor notes, and will have a very brisk short finish. In a warmer climate that same grape will possibly have less acid but may develop riper fruit notes, juicy fruit, stone fruit, kind of notes. If you think of a red grape in a cool climate, such as Pinot Noir, again, really good acidity. Reasonable color development and tannin development. Very interesting black fruit nuanced flavors, versus a warmer climate where the acidity might be lacking a little bit. The color could be good, and of course blending can help that. But overall, the wine might be just as interesting, but in a different way, in a less tannic, less acidic way, but in a warmer, softer presentation. In this lesson, we discussed climate and style in general terms. In our next lesson, we will turn our attention to selecting wines for this course.
