How to play a Game of Wine? Part 3

In this episode our wine decision making process moves further.
Having identified what you want, you need to know where to get it.
The answer might be as simple as the nearest supermarket.
But what we mean is the trip around the globe!

Let's hit the road!

The governing variable in the business of wine is location: you can't grow grapes at the North Pole, no matter what you do. If we considered the vine merely a berry-bearing bush, then, yes, it will grow almost anywhere.

But the vine as a source of drinkable wine is another story. At latitude of about 50 degrees North the grapes are so sour, that even a bird would hesitate to eat them. In fact, in Germany, this is exactly what happens in a bad year: the wine is undrinkable and is diplomatically referred to as a “three-men-wine”. This means it takes two men to force the third one to drink it!

Apparently, in the Northern latitudes more reliable and common drinks are beer made of barley, whiskey made of corn or rye and vodka made of wheat and potatoes.

If we move further South, at the 30 parallel (like in Cairo in Egypt and Rabat in Morocco) the grape grows in fertile valleys and unparched hillsides. But the wine it makes is harsh and rough.
Thus in really hot places the brew of choice will be rum made of molasses, gin made of sugarcane or tequila made of cactus juice.

Therefore, practical upper and lower limits of the Wine Belt are latitudes 50 and 30.

Most people think, that the Wine zone primarily consists of France, Italy and to some extent Spain, Portugal and California.
In fact wine can be grown almost anywhere in the world between these latitudes.

There are notable wine zones in South Africa and Australia, the wines of Chile are the best in South America, the vineyards of Argentina are the most productive. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia produce large amounts of wine. Tokay, an almost legendary sweet wine, is grown in Hungary!

In our next episode we will look how wine depends on the weather and what means “a good year”!