Wines of the Great Southern Grape Belt

It’s Waddle time from the Great Grape Belt, across the equator in the Southern Hemisphere. Everything is topsy-turvy, upside down, bizarro land down here. It’s also the home turf of our beloved mascot, the penguin.

Right now, in Upside-down Land, winemakers are preparing for harvest. That’s because it’s summertime there when the unrelenting cold, dark, wet of winter blankets Seattle. Southern hemisphere wines achieve physiological ripeness and are harvested a full 6-ish months before we do up here in the North, in their late summer to autumn of January to April.. That means that when you see, say, a 2021 vintage on a bottle of wine from South Africa, it was harvested earlier than a bottle stamped of the same vintage from up in France or California. 

Grape Belt you say? Why yes, our friend the vitis vinifera grape vine (the species that makes all our varietals from Syrah to Sémillon) thrives best in between latitudes 30°and 50°and if you’re paying attention, this is roughly  where the USA’s Western continental edge is situated. In our own Washington state, the border with BC is 49° N, and San Diego runs about 32° which leaves a little bit of flexibility for places like Mexico and Canada to have small-time wine industries in exciting regions like Valle de Guadalupe and Okanagan Valley, respectively. Why? Well, because on our lonely planet this is the temperate zone, decisively out of the tropics and far enough away from polar frosts. In order to make quality wine, the V. Vinifera needs to experience seasons, to rest, to go dormant. If it’s too hot all the time, it will just flourish and produce fruit whenever, which isn’t conducive to a productive harvest season. 

This grape belt wraps all the way around the world! When it gets to Europe, it cuts through France at about Champagne. North of this line is what we call the beer belt, separating wine making regions from beer-producing countries to the north. Further afield, countries like China and Japan align perfectly in the grape belt, and are only beginning to explore their terroir for the purpose of quality wine production - what a time to be alive! 

Of course, there are a million exceptions - Mexico is a great example, which has wine growing regions all the way down in the mountains north of Mexico City at very high elevation, which can compensate for the lack of latitude. Consequently, the Okanagan valley in BC at almost 100 miles top to bottom  gets very hot in Summer - and it’s a future region to watch as our planet burns and melts, shifting the temperate zone north. Unfortunately, most of the US does get too cold for too long, therefore isn’t tenable for viticulture en masse - that said, there is at least one winery in every state, including Hawaii and Alaska! Mostly, vines grown throughout the US outside of the West Coast and places like New York are hybrid species. Vitis Vinifera can be blended with species native to North America like V.  labrusca and V. Riparia to make new varietals such as Seyval Blanc, Chambourcin, and Frontenac. The resulting wines have some semblance of vinifera complexity, while also exhibiting a hardiness to the weather as a half native vine.

But we digress, there are in fact TWO parallel bands of grape growing regions. We’re talking about latitudes 30°thru 50°S this release, and their own grape belt where considerably less land mass exists between wide stretches of ocean. Only a handful of countries reside here, but they have made the most out of their lucky geo-location: South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Chile & Argentina in South America (with maybe a little slice of Uruguay and even Brazil). In addition to an opposite seasonal pattern, Southern hemisphere vineyards are planted on the Northern slopes, if they want to make use of the sun - it is truly backwards.  

Because these wine producing countries are farther afield, many of them have a signature grape varietal that helps market wines to consumers worldwide. Think of Argentinian wine and Malbec comes to mind. Chile is adeptly trying the same strategy  with Carménère, and Uruguay has Tannat (we really tried to get a Uruguayan Tannat for this release and failed, if you find one, go for it). These varietals are more obscure from their home regions in France, and it’s quite astounding how these countries have carved out an identity for themselves by promoting them. We’ve selected more off the beaten path wines (are you surprised?) because we want to showcase how these countries have their own unique wine stories, traditions, and rad renegade producers. Individually, the Southern Hemisphere countries  are some of the biggest producers of wine in the world, and together are an absolute juggernaut of innovation, making an enormous spectrum of wines to be celebrated. Shall we explore?

This release brings wines from six countries, 3 women wine-makers, a few Latinx producers, TWO amphorae wines, and an array of unusual vineyard pests. Get ready!