Viognier is a full-bodied white wine with a floral scent, grown in France’s Rhône region and recently planted in other countries. It was nearly extinct after the phylloxera plague but has since regained popularity. It has a sweet aroma but tends to be dry, and should be drunk young. It can also be used as a minority grape in some red wines.
Viognier is a very full-bodied but soft white wine grown all over the world. Viognier is one of the aromatic wines, like Moscato or Riesling wines. Its floral scent is one of its main appeals, considered by some to be the best aroma in wine. Viognier is grown in the Rhône region of France, in the Condrieu appellation south of Lyon. It has also recently been planted extensively in the Languedoc in southern France, but the Rhône Viognier is still the best known.
Once upon a time, before the mid-19th century phylloxera plague on vines around the world, Viognier was an incredibly popular wine. After this scourge destroyed most of the vines, however, Viognier became a nearly extinct grape and was rarely seen in wines. In the early 1990s, renewed interest in the grape led to massive replanting across France and its introduction to North America and Australia. It has continued to grow in popularity in a small sector of the wine community, and there are now a number of vineyards outside of France that specialize in producing high quality Viognier.
Like Riesling, Viognier has a very strong and sweet aroma. Also like Riesling, however, the wine itself tends to be quite dry. This study into the contrast between sweet scent and dry body is one of the reasons many people find wine so appealing. In the Rhône region, wines made with Viognier tend to have overlays of apricots and flowers, as well as many other fruit and floral keynotes.
Viognier is a white wine that should be drunk very young to get the most out of it. If left to rest for more than a handful of years, the wine will lose virtually all of its attractive aroma, leaving it rather dead to the nose. Viognier is sometimes made into a dessert wine by using noble rot to help trap more sugar within the grapes on the vine. These dessert wines will age for a long time, like most of this variety.
Normally, Viognier is colorless, producing wines that are made entirely from the Viognier grape. Sometimes, the grape is used as a minority grape in some red wines, such as those predominantly made up of Syrah, to help remove some of the acidic edge from the wine.
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