Principal wine growing regions, old and new worlds

Hungary Switzerland

I think that if you go as far as listing Canada, the above two are a must (no pun intended).

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

Well, like your cultivar question, a lot depends on criteria. Under almost any criteria I wouldn't include Uruguay. And sorry to our Canadian readers, but I don't think Canadian wines are a significant part of many non-Canadians' wine life (I've liked quite a few Canadian dessert wines, but I seldom see dry wines even in US).

Also, even in US, I find it hard to justify a separate region for Washington while all of France is lumped together?

Until recently, my wine was all stored in large bins. This was how I divided up storage:

OLD WORLD France Bordeaux Burgundy Loire Alsace Rhone Champagne Other (Jura, SW France, Languedoc,etc)

Italy Piemonte Tuscany Other (Umbria, Friuli, Verona,etc)

Spain

Germany

Austria

Portugal

NEW WORLD US California Other (Oregon, Washington, NY)

Australia, NZ

Other: South Africa, Lebanon, Chile Argentina, Canada

Now, that reflects my prejudices (and I'm aware that there are differences between Kamptal and Wachau, Clare Valley and Barossa, MSR & Rheingau), but it fit my storage needs. Not that different from a lot of stores' aisle setups.

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Like Mike, I'd offer Hungary (and, yes, maybe Switzerland) to the list, but also question the inclusion of Uruguay -- Is it a *principal* wine region?

Mark Lipton

Ah, REGIONS, I missed that. Yes, I agree, having Oregon on one side and all of Italy or France on the other did not make sense. Some of Italy's and France's REGIONS produce more than Australia and New Zealand put together...

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

"Leo Bueno" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I'd include Hungary and exclude Switzerland - not because the wine is poor, but total production is small and little is exported.Roumania, Bulgaria and what used to be Yugoslavia all have a large production with a generally simple quality even when they do have some very classy wines. Anders

When I last looked at the data (admittedly a couple of years ago), GREECE was a major European wine producer, on the same order of quantity as Germany as I recall. Easy enough to check. (I hope, Leo, that you have some good reference books at hand -- at the risk of repetition may I recommend Stevenson's "New Sotheby" Encyclopedia, $30 well spent, new. It has been updated a couple of times, may be in need of it before long but for basics and orientation it's pretty solid.)

Stats on wine production are available from trade Web sites in various regions, such as California's "Wine Institute"

and its "Industry Background and Statistics" page accessible via one of the index tabs. Abundant worldwide data there, including consumption.

Hope this is useful -- Max

"Leo Bueno" wrote

Leo, as part of your preamble, I *would* mention some of the real surprises.

I mean, who would really suspect that China is rated in the top 10 producers (by volume) or that Brazil, Japan, Uzbekistan and Mexico all rate in the Top

30 producers.

Before the (former) Soviet Union broke up, the USSR was third largest producer - nowadays Russia, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Georgia individually all rate in the Top 30 producers - again, by volume.

But since you are talking Regions and not Countries, although you may choose to lump the regions of Spain, Italy and Germany together, I don't believe you can do that in the case of France.

So, my list would look something like -

France - Bordeaux (Incl Sauternes) - Burgundy - Rhone - Champagne - Other Areas Italy Spain Germany Portugal Hungary Austria

Now, I know that you are in the USA and your country ranks #4 in world production statistics - and you may choose to have several specific areas which you wish to cover, but I would do something like -

US - California US - Other Australia South Africa Argentina Chile New Zealand

Good luck with the class!