Wine isn’t as narrow a category
as most people seem to think. It can in fact be made from almost any type of
fruit and the market out there is so much more varied than you might think.
That’s why this week the Ideal Wine Company blog explores how fruit
wine has helped shape the entire market.
The modern market is dominated by
wines that are primarily made from grapes; it’s so embedded into our perception
of the world’s most common drink, that most people don’t realise that it’s
far more complex than that.
Ideal Wine Company’s Introduction to Fruit Vintages
At its most basic, wine is just
fermented fruit. This is because it is the sugar in fruit that turns into alcohol,
and that’s why grapes work in the first place. The production of wine actually
goes back thousands of years and across a breadth of cultures. Back in the age
of antiquity, our forebears didn’t restrict themselves to grape wine.
From this we can see that it
really is possible to get any type of wine; tea, elderberry, raspberry,
pineapple, orange, apple etc. It’s a very broad category. You can even get them
on the open market in countries like Japan, Korea, the US; even here in the UK
to some extent. The US actually has somewhat of a penchant for plum wine, for
example.
The thing is though, that our
market is practically saturated with grape varieties of wine, so could fruit
wine actually have any effect on the luxury bottles of the type that Ideal Wine
Company feature. Yes it can, and it’s all to do with blending flavours.
The Influence of Fruit
In the modern market, the idea of
a blended vintage is hardly something new. It’s actually pretty common to blend
two complementary grape varieties together to craft something more superior to
the sum of its parts. That, for example, is how the reputation of Chardonnay
has been rescued by Vintners in recent years.
However what is less commonly
known is that the wine market has taken to blending different fruit varieties
to market their vintages to a new audience. In the slightly more risqué bottle
of modern dry white, for instance, you might find anything from elderflower to
pineapple as a compliment to the standard grape flavouring.
For the Ideal Wine Company this
quick exploration of the impact fruit wines have had on the modern market has
emphasised the need of the industry to open itself up to new ideas. Innovation
leads to change and change is the reason luxury wine still fascinates buyers
the world over in 2014.
