wine list over the world

Nowhere

I have never seen such a list, and it would be extremely long. Some countries such as France have listings and specifications for at least their better wines. This would usually be under some government agency or sub-agency that handles wines - often part of a department of agriculture. However many wines are sold under brand names. Many of the less expensive wines are blends of wines, sometimes from various regions within a country and even including wine from other countries. Thus I doubt if you can find a list of all wines made and/or blended even in a single country. Many famous vineyards have several owners. Thus you need not only the name of the vineyard, but also the name of who produced the wine from grapes they grew in the vineyard or from grapes grown in the vineyard bought from other owners of plots in the vineyard.

Indeed a long list! Cellartracker lists 147,000 different wines (not counting separate vintages), and it is a list heavily weighted towards "collectibles" and wines available in US. Most $5 supermarket wines or wines not imported to US won't be shown.

Here's mine:

1. Red
2. White
3. Pink
4. Sparkling
5. Fortified

Anything more detailed would be, for the reasons already stated by others, too big to be practical.

Mark Lipton

Mark, I'm a wine enthusiast but I've never seen in Italy a "fortified wine"... what is it?

--

Think Marsala

Marsala, Port(o) and Sherry are the best known examples. It refers to wines in which fermentation is stopped by the addition of distilled spirits to make a (usually sweet) wine that is also higher in alcohol than normal table wine.

HTH Mark Lipton

Fortified wines once were far more popular than now. Most table wines are about 13% alcohol or less, but with great care some, especially in California, can ferment to a few percent higher. If one stops fermentation,, before it is complete with the addition of alcohol, often in the form of brandy, the yeast cells are killed and the wine stops fermenting. Any remaining sugar makes the wine slightly to very sweet. The alcohol content of a fortified wine often is around 20% ( from say 18% to the low 20s). Some countries, including the US, have laws defining the alcohol content range for fortified wine. In some wines that do not have too much sugar, the wine is fermented completely and is very dry before being fortified. In some cases, sweeting wine is then added, depending on the taste of the various markets. Thus we have the usual Oloroso Sherry, that has added sweet wine, and sometimes is very sweet. However Oloroso Sherry is naturally dry, and very high quality dry versions are available, sometimes being difficult to find in some export markets.

Fortified wines do not go bad as easily on long voyages to distant export markets, especially when the wine gets hot on a ship. In the old days, much wine was shipped in barrel, and it could take months for a shipment to reach the US, India, etc. Table wines often went bad after such abuse. At one time Maderia was one of the most popular wines in the US. The British drank Sherry and Port around the world in India, etc as well as at home. There were many other fortified wines from several countries that were popular in some markets. The British, Spanish, Portugese and others sometimes had spats with one another. As a result, some wine might get cut off or highly taxed in some markets and would be replaced by wine from another country.

Concerning Italy, there are several fortified wines, but some are seldom seen in many export markets and many are apparently not very popular in Italy. The best known one today is Marsala which comes from Sicily. Most of this fortified wine is sold as sweet. A dry virgin version also is available, but it can be difficult to find in some markets. Marsala likely remains very popular because it is used in cooking. Although the lower "cooking" grades of Marsala are not of very high quality for drinking, some very high quality aged Marsala is made, such as some of the virgin types. Marsala was first made by the Woodhouse Brothers from Liverpool in 1773.

Manuel Marino skrev i snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com dette:

I have seen a lot of fortified wines in Italy. In general i would say that almost any cheap wine with high alcohol content is fortified by adding extra alcohol after fermentation. Look for the words 'Vino Liquoroso' on the label - that is the stuff.

regards Jan

Oh sorry, of course... it should have been obvious...

I am near Pantelleria and there is a very good fortified wine from there.

--

Are you sure? I am only aware of "passito", which is never fortified...

Huh, you are right, Passito Liquoroso. What a concept. It does indeed exist. Why would you want to fortify a passito, would you not want to leave a passito with its natural sweetness? Does it need to have its fermentation blocked by mutation? It must be REALLY sweet, I presume?

In sherry, fermentation is not stopped by adding spirits - they are added after the wine has fermented until dry. Sweet sheeries get sweet by adding unfermented grape juice.

I know you know, but I thought it correct to comment on it from a didactical viewpoint since the person asking the original question might not.

Cheers

Nils

At harvest, we always pick our nits by hand to avoid damage to the nitclusters.