The Super Gigantic Winegrape Glossary

This has to be one of the most profound and complete reference sites on the web. Anthony J. Hawkins presents an A-Z of wine grapes. Each entry fully describes the grape in terms of its history, where it is grown and the styles of wine made from it. The site is basically one huge, long page (almost 400kb in size, so at standard modem speeds allow at least two minutes to load fully). Once it is loaded, however, it is really very fast and flexible to use. It will also print onto about 160 pages if you wish to make a hard copy.


SPECIAL FEATURES


Grape Glossary is what the site is all about and in fact there is not one, but three of these:


Vitis Vinifera is the wine grape. Vitis vinifera varieties are all the biggies such as Chardonnay, and Cabernet Sauvignon that dominate the international wine-making world. As far as making wine is concerned, these are the aristocrats of the grape world. For each Hawkins provides notes on cultivation of the variety, a description of its characteristics and any synonyms by which it is known in different countries.


Lesser/Crossed Vinifera Varieties includes more obscure varieties that you are unlikely to find bottled on your supermarket shelf (‘make mine an Albalonga'), as well as cross-breeds. Crosses are very important in certain wine- producing countries like Germany, where the grapes have been specially developed to ripen early in an often marginal climate. This section contains many hundreds of entries.



French-American/AmericanHybrid/NativeVarieties lists those vines that are non-Vinifera species. Vitis labruscana for example, is a species quite common in North America. Wines made from grapes like Triumph, Vidal and Baco Noir are not uncommon, though rarely seen in Europe.


OTHER FEATURES


Hybrids contains general information on cross-breeds, including the origin and reason for development of particular crosses.


Links to a small number of sites which contain high quality images of either wine grape varieties or pests.