The Wine Century Club

I meant to post this here as it's something I'm working on at the moment, casually though as I'm trying to find great wines to fit in each varietal, but I thought others might be interested.

http://delongwine.com/century.html

Here's the corresponding article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00367.html

I think it's kind of weird that they count Primitivo and Zinfandel as one grape.

I think you posted elsewhere that you're starting to look at some more obscure Italian wines. You might want to check out the wines of Emilio Bulfon, who specializes in native Friulian wines (um, I don't think they're served at Frasca).

He produces seven varietal wines, only one of which is on the list (piculit neri). I've had these highly recommended, and I've got a few bottles in my basement, though I haven't gotten around to trying them.

http://www.bulfon.it/eng/vitigni.html

I haven't kept detailed notes, but I believe I'm in the 60-70 range on the checklist presented.

Edited to fix URLs

Aaron Deacon wrote:I think it's kind of weird that they count Primitivo and Zinfandel as one grape.

I think you posted elsewhere that you're starting to look at some more obscure Italian wines. You might want to check out the wines of Emilio Bulfon, who specializes in native Friulian wines (um, I don't think they're served at Frasca).

He produces seven varietal wines, only one of which is on the list (piculit neri). I've had these highly recommended, and I've got a few bottles in my basement, though I haven't gotten around to trying them.

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=8413

I haven't kept detailed notes, but I believe I'm in the 60-70 range on the checklist presented.

I am doing some geeky Italian stuff right now. I'm not quite sure why they are listing Primitivo and Zin as one, it's one of the oddities of this list. I'll see if I can grab some of Bulfon's stuff. Thanks for the tip. When I make it out there we'll have to open a few bottles.

jpschust wrote:When I make it out there we'll have to open a few bottles.

If we can time it right.

I'm in Kansas City now, and I'm only in Chicago 1-2 days a month.

I fixed the Bulfon link, where I'd accidentally repeated the Frasca thread link.

Cheers,

Aaron

I thought that someone did genetic testing and figured out that zinfandel and primitivo are the same grape. Presumably Italian immigrants brought it to California.

-Will

WillG wrote:I thought that someone did genetic testing and figured out that zinfandel and primitivo are the same grape. Presumably Italian immigrants brought it to California.

I guess they did...I'd long heard that primitivo was some long lost cousin, but didn't realize they'd actually been verified as the same grape.

http://www.answers.com/topic/zinfandel

The Wikipedia entry is particularly interesting (and maybe even true), about the work entailed to find the Croatian version of the grape, which was presumably brought to both Italy and California.

WillG wrote:I thought that someone did genetic testing and figured out that zinfandel and primitivo are the same grape. Presumably Italian immigrants brought it to California.

I think I read that they're basically the same grape, but Zinfandel was a clone that came from the area around Trieste. Here's more info:
http://www.winepros.org/wine101/grape_p ... fandel.htm

There are about 850 varietals in Italy alone. I think the list needs to be expanded a bit.

deesher wrote:There are about 850 varietals in Italy alone. I think the list needs to be expanded a bit.

While there may be 850 varietals, the wine drinking world tends to drink off about 180-200 of them total. I don't think this list is designed to be the exhaustive end all and be all of all lists of varietals, but even the rarer of these varietals are somewhat easily found in any major city with a thorough search.

I am up in the 80's but I am fairly certain there are both grapes I have had in blends (example: I know Soave is primarily Garganega, but I think some of them mix in some other obscure grapes) that I do not know about, as well as I have tried more than a couple of grapes that are not on this list. Pretty sure some Balkan grapes are missing, as well as some American varietals they use in the Finger Lakes, so now this requires a bit of research, since I do not keep detailed wine logs.

Anyway, there are lines to add your own, and one of these days I will add the others and probably make my 100.

The good news is that although the Plavac Mali I have had has mostly been not so good, there now is some benefit to having tried it.