Grape Varieties
Know your grapes
Over 1,300 grape varieties are used in wine production. Here are the ones worth knowing well. Each has its own personality, homeland, and style.
Red grapes
Cabernet Sauvignon
Bordeaux, France
The world's most planted red grape, Cabernet Sauvignon produces full-bodied wines with dark fruit, firm tannins, and extraordinary ageing potential. At its best in Bordeaux, Napa Valley, and Coonawarra. It has a gift for oak and ages better than almost any other variety.
Pinot Noir
Burgundy, France
The heartbreaker of the wine world: notoriously difficult to grow but capable of producing wines of breathtaking complexity. Light in colour but profound in aroma. Red fruit, earth, and forest floor in the best examples; pure cherry in the simpler ones.
Syrah / Shiraz
Northern Rhône, France
One grape, two personalities. As Syrah in the northern Rhône it is savoury, peppery, and elegant. As Shiraz in the Barossa it becomes rich, jammy, and opulent. The name changes at the equator. Both are magnificent in the right context.
Merlot
Bordeaux, France
The most approachable of the great Bordeaux varieties, Merlot produces plush, plummy wines with soft tannins. At its greatest in Pomerol, where Petrus is made, it reaches almost mythical heights. Widely planted everywhere but rarely taken seriously outside its heartland.
Malbec
Southwest France and Argentina
Once a blending grape in Bordeaux, Malbec found its spiritual home in the high-altitude vineyards of Mendoza, producing wines of extraordinary depth, velvety tannins, and dark plum character. At altitude above 900m, it achieves a finesse it rarely shows in France.
Sangiovese
Tuscany, Italy
The grape behind Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. High acidity and tannin, bright cherry and dried herb aromas, earthy leather notes with age. It struggles outside Italy but at home it makes wines of real distinction.
Nebbiolo
Piedmont, Italy
Deceptive at first glance: pale garnet in the glass but brutal in the mouth when young. Ferocious tannins and high acidity demand years of ageing, but the reward is extraordinary. Tar, dried roses, truffle, and a finish that can last a minute in great examples.
Tempranillo
Rioja, Spain
The backbone of Rioja and Ribera del Duero. Leather, tobacco, vanilla from American oak, and red cherry — Tempranillo takes extended oak ageing better than almost any other grape. Crianza, Reserva, Gran Reserva: the classifications map directly onto flavour complexity.
Grenache
Spain and Southern France
High natural alcohol, soft tannins, and exuberant red fruit. Grenache is the workhorse grape of the southern Rhône and Spain but can produce serious, structured wines in old-vine examples from Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Priorat. Also the base of most good rosés.
Zinfandel
California, United States
America's grape by adoption (it's genetically identical to Croatia's Primitivo). At its best: jammy blackberry, spice, briar, and a rustic, slightly wild quality. Old vines in Dry Creek Valley and Lodi produce the best examples.
Barbera
Piedmont, Italy
Barbera is a red grape from Piedmont making juicy, food-friendly wines with sour cherry and blackberry fruit, very high acidity and unusually low tannin for a red. That combination is its signature: plenty of grip from acid, very little from tannin, which makes it soft on the gums but mouth-watering. Traditionally the everyday wine of Piedmont while Nebbiolo took the glory, it ranges from bright and unoaked to serious barrel-aged bottlings from Asti and Alba that gain plum, chocolate and spice.
Gamay
Burgundy, France
Gamay is the red grape of Beaujolais, producing light-bodied, low-tannin wines bursting with red cherry, raspberry, cranberry and violet, often with a distinctive banana or bubblegum note when made by carbonic maceration. High acidity and gentle tannin make it one of the most refreshing reds there is, and it is among the few reds genuinely improved by a light chill. The simple Nouveau bottlings are only part of the story: the ten Beaujolais Crus, led by Morgon, Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent, make structured wines that age for a decade.
Corvina
Veneto, Italy
Corvina is the backbone of Valpolicella and Amarone, from the hills north of Verona. On its own it makes a pale, light-bodied red with high acidity, modest tannin, sour cherry fruit and a characteristic bitter-almond finish. Its thick skins are what make it exceptional for appassimento, the drying of grapes on racks that concentrates them into Amarone, so the same grape yields both one of Italy's lightest reds and one of its most powerful. It is almost always blended with Corvinone, Rondinella and sometimes Molinara and Oseleta.
Negroamaro
Puglia, Italy
Negroamaro is a red grape from Puglia in Italy's deep south, and its name — roughly "black bitter" — describes it well. It makes deeply coloured, full-bodied wines with ripe black cherry, plum and fig, warm baking spice, and a characteristic bittersweet, faintly herbal finish. Grown in a hot, sunny climate, it carries generous alcohol and soft, rounded tannin, which makes it approachable young. It is the mainstay of Salice Salentino and is often blended with Malvasia Nera for extra perfume, and it remains one of the better-value southern Italian reds.
White grapes
Chardonnay
Burgundy, France
The winemaker's canvas: Chardonnay has very little aroma of its own but expresses terroir and winemaking choices with extraordinary fidelity. In Chablis it is steely and mineral; in Meursault rich and buttery; in Marlborough tropically fruity.
Sauvignon Blanc
Loire Valley, France
The grape that smells like a place. In Sancerre it is flinty and precise; in Marlborough it is explosively tropical and citrusy; in Bordeaux it is blended with Sémillon for extraordinary longevity. The common thread: high acidity and a distinctive herbal, green quality.
Riesling
Germany
The most misunderstood of the great grapes: most Riesling is bone dry, but the grape's reputation for sweetness persists. At its finest it is a wine of extraordinary mineral purity that ages for decades, developing classic petrol notes. The range is the whole point.
Pinot Gris
Alsace, France
A mutation of Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris produces unusually full-bodied whites with a slightly smoky, spiced character. In Alsace (where it's at its greatest) it ranges from rich and dry to intensely sweet. In Italy as Pinot Grigio it is lighter, crisper, and less interesting.
Viognier
Northern Rhône, France
Full body, low acidity, and an extraordinarily aromatic profile: white peach, apricot, and jasmine blossom. Nearly extinct in the 1960s, now planted worldwide. At its finest in Condrieu; often over-cropped and over-oaked elsewhere. The aromatics fade with age so drink it young.
Chenin Blanc
Loire Valley, France
One of the most versatile grapes in wine. In the Loire it produces bone-dry Savennières, gently sparkling Vouvray, and intensely sweet Quarts de Chaume. In South Africa it makes honest, food-friendly everyday whites. The natural acidity is so high that it can handle almost any level of sweetness.
Gewurztraminer
Alsace, France
The most instantly recognisable grape in the world: lychee, rose petals, ginger, and Turkish delight in the glass before you even taste it. Low acidity makes it feel rich and slightly oily. Alsace produces the benchmarks; elsewhere it can be cloying and one-dimensional.
Grüner Veltliner
Austria
Austria's flagship white and one of the most food-friendly grapes grown anywhere. White pepper, citrus zest, and mineral character at the lighter end; cream, stone fruit, and real complexity in the best Smaragd examples from the Wachau. Consistently undervalued outside Austria.
Albariño
Rías Baixas, Spain
The great white grape of Galicia in northwest Spain. High acidity, peach and citrus fruit, a distinctive saline mineral finish that comes from the proximity to the Atlantic. Made to drink young and to drink with seafood. One of the most specific regional pairings in all of wine.
Pinot Blanc
Alsace and Germany
The unsung Alsatian grape. Pinot Blanc lacks the intensity of Riesling or the drama of Gewurztraminer, but it produces reliably excellent, versatile wines at reasonable prices. Crisp apple, pear, and almond; food-friendly and honest.
Pinot Grigio
Burgundy, France
Pinot Grigio is a white grape producing light, dry, crisp wines with green apple, pear, lemon and a faint almond note. It is the same grape as Pinot Gris, but the name signals a style: Italian Pinot Grigio is picked early for a lean, neutral, refreshing wine, while French Pinot Gris from Alsace is riper, fuller and more aromatic. At its best from northern Italy it is delicate and mineral rather than bland; the mass-market versions that gave it a dull reputation are a question of yield and price, not of the grape itself.
Glera
Veneto, Italy
Glera is the white grape behind Prosecco, grown in the hills of Veneto and Friuli. It makes a light, low-alcohol sparkling wine with green apple, white peach, pear and honeysuckle, and a soft, frothy mousse. Unlike Champagne, Prosecco takes its second fermentation in a pressurised tank rather than in the bottle, which is why it tastes of fresh primary fruit and flowers instead of bread and toast — and why it costs less. Most is Brut or Extra Dry, the latter confusingly the sweeter of the two.
Pecorino
Marche and Abruzzo, Italy
Pecorino is a white grape from the Marche and Abruzzo on Italy's Adriatic coast — no relation to the sheep's cheese of the same name, though both take it from the Italian for sheep. Nearly extinct by the 1980s, it was revived and is now one of central Italy's most interesting whites. It makes a dry, medium-bodied wine with high acidity, green apple, white peach, citrus peel and a distinctly savoury, almost saline, herbal edge. It has more structure and grip than most Italian coastal whites, and good examples hold up for several years.