Top 100 wines of Corsica - Page 3
Discover the top 100 best wines of Corsica as well as the best winemakers in the region. Explore the varietals of the wines that are popular of Corsica and the best vintages to taste in this region.
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea, located between the southeast coast of Provence and the west coast of Tuscany. Although it is closer to Italy, Corsica has been under French rule since 1769 and is one of the 26 regions of France. The island's Italian origins are evident in its wines, which are mainly made from the classic Italian Grapes Vermentino and Sangiovese (known here as Rolle and Nielluccio respectively). Despite its remoteness, Corsican winemakers have amassed an impressive and diverse portfolio of grape varieties - there are very few places on earth where Pinot Noir, Tempranillo and Barbarossa grow side by side.
More than 40 of them, mostly of Spanish, Italian and French origin, are allowed to be used in quality wines. Despite this wonderful diversity, most of them are only used in IGP wines; only a small handful of varieties are used in Corsican AOC wines (see French wine labels). Just as Corsica's Italian history is evident in the local wines, so is the French connection. The classic grape varieties of southern France are all present here to some extent; Grenache is a main ingredient in many Corsican red wines, and Syrah, Mourvedre, Cinsaut and Carignan all play a supporting role.
Cabernet Franc is one of the oldest red grape varieties in Bordeaux. The Libourne region is its terroir where it develops best. The terroirs of Saint-Emilion and Fronsac allow it to mature and develop its best range of aromas. It is also the majority in many blends. The very famous Château Cheval Blanc, for example, uses 60% Cabernet Franc. The wines produced with Cabernet Franc are medium in colour with fine tannins and subtle aromas of small red fruits and spices. When blended with Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, it brings complexity and a bouquet of aromas to the wine. It produces fruity wines that can be drunk quite quickly, but whose great vintages can be kept for a long time. It is an earlier grape variety than Cabernet Sauvignon, which means that it is planted as far north as the Loire Valley. In Anjou, it is also used to make sweet rosé wines. Cabernet Franc is now used in some twenty countries in Europe and throughout the world.
wines from the region of Corsica go well with generally quite well with dishes of beef, mature and hard cheese or spicy food such as recipes of romazava (madagascar), salted cake with bacon, comté and onion or fideuà (spain).
On the nose in the region of Corsica often reveals types of flavors of grapefruit, earth or spices and sometimes also flavors of citrus fruit, red fruit or tree fruit. In the mouth in the region of Corsica is a powerful with a nice balance between acidity and tannins.
Layers of colour in the sky before me: indigo, peach, salmon. In the rear-view mirror, the gold was catching fire. As I drove down through the lonely, Mistral-chilled vines of Babeau-Bouldoux towards nearby St-Chinian, I was thinking about what Christine Deleuze of Clos Bagatelle had just said. ‘When you came to visit 10 years ago,’ she reminded me, ‘you said we needed to wait another decade for a market breakthrough. Today you’ve said we need to wait another decade or two. So when, exactly, wil ...
Rosé-tinted glasses aside, there is a reason – the modern economics of it mean that a €4 bottle of Côtes de Castillon or Montagne St-Emilion doesn’t translate into anything even comparable in price terms when on a UK shop shelf (assuming it could even get there). It’s the sad fact of commerciality. We taste hundreds of Bordeaux wines at every price point every year, to find those few gems that represent the best value for their quality. Even then, the volumes available might mean that a wine w ...
A little background first. The unstitching of France’s colonial empire in North Africa between 1956 and 1962 intensified political tensions on Corsica as well as giving rise to an ill-starred attempt by recently arrived French-Algerian wine farmers to turn Corsica’s eastern plains into a gigantic factory vineyard. Between 1960 and 2000, production rose four-fold – then collapsed. Away from the plains in the higher-quality appellation zones, meanwhile, an undiscerning tourist market combined with ...