Grapes & Styles

Cabernet Sauvignon has small, thick-skinned berries, so its wines are deep in colour and high in tannin, with blackcurrant and cedar. It ripens late and needs a warm, dry season, which is why it thrives in Bordeaux's Médoc and in Napa Valley. Merlot ripens earlier and gives softer, plumper, rounder wine; it leads on Bordeaux's Right Bank and is the usual partner of Cabernet in a blend.

Syrah, called Shiraz in Australia, is one grape with two names and two faces. In the cooler northern Rhône it is peppery, floral and savoury; in warm Barossa it is plush, dark and jammy. The name on the label is a hint about the style. Blends are common too: the best-known red blend in the world, Bordeaux, is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Chardonnay is fairly neutral in flavour, which is what makes it a mirror for the place and the winemaker. Grown in cool Chablis and fermented in steel it is lean, green-apple and stony. Grown in warm California and put through malolactic fermentation and new oak it is rich, buttery and tropical. Sauvignon Blanc is the opposite: loud and aromatic, with grass, citrus and passion fruit, from crisp Sancerre to exuberant Marlborough.

Learn these five and you have a set of yardsticks. New grapes can be described by comparison: lighter than Cabernet, more aromatic than Chardonnay.

Thin skins are the key. A grape with thin skins gives up little colour and tannin, so the wines are pale ruby, silky in texture and often quite high in acidity. The flavours run to red fruit (cherry, strawberry, raspberry), flowers and, with age, forest floor and mushroom. They are usually made in cooler places, because these grapes lose their delicacy when overripe.

Pinot Noir is the benchmark and the hardest of the classic grapes to grow: thin-skinned, prone to disease, and extremely sensitive to its site. That sensitivity is why Burgundy's vineyards taste so different from one another, and why the best bottles cost so much. Gamay, the grape of Beaujolais, is juicier and simpler; much of it is made by carbonic maceration, which gives Beaujolais Nouveau its candied, banana-like fruit. The ten Beaujolais crus, such as Morgon and Fleurie, are more serious and can age.

Cinsault is a heat-tolerant, fragrant grape, soft and floral, used in blends across the south of France and a common part of Provençal rosé. All of these are best served a little below room temperature, around 13 to 15 degrees Celsius, which keeps the fruit lively.

Light does not mean simple. Great red Burgundy is among the most complex and long-lived wine in the world, and it manages that with delicacy instead of weight.

Where light reds rely on delicacy, bold reds rely on concentration. Thick skins provide colour and tannin, warmth provides sugar and so alcohol, and the wines are often aged in oak to add spice and soften the tannin. Alcohol of 13.5 to 15 per cent is common. They are the classic partners for grilled meat and hard cheese, because protein and fat soften tannin on the palate.

Nebbiolo is the great exception to the rule that dark grapes make dark wine. It is pale, almost garnet in the glass, and yet ferociously tannic and acidic, with rose, tar and cherry on the nose. It makes Barolo and Barbaresco in Piedmont and needs years to soften. Tempranillo, the grape of Rioja and Ribera del Duero, is medium-bodied with strawberry, leather and tobacco notes and takes well to oak; its name comes from the Spanish for early, because it ripens before many neighbours.

Malbec started in south-west France and found its second home in Argentina, where high-altitude vineyards make plush, dark, violet-scented wines. Tannat, from Madiran and Uruguay, has some of the highest tannin of any grape. Mourvèdre likes heat, ripens late and gives meaty, savoury, dark wines, notably in Provence's Bandol and as a blending partner in the southern Rhône. Turkey's Boğazkere, whose name means throat burner, is another: thick-skinned, late-ripening and tannic, with black cherry and tobacco.

The lesson is that structure is the point of these wines: give them food, time, or a decanter.

Some grapes are packed with terpenes, the same family of aroma compounds found in flowers, citrus peel and hops. Muscat and Gewürztraminer carry the most, which is why they smell of lychee, rose and orange blossom before you taste them. Riesling has fewer, but still gives lime, jasmine and peach.

Riesling is one of the most transparent grapes: it shows the ground it grows in. On Mosel slate it is delicate, low in alcohol and racy; in Alsace it is fuller and drier. It runs from bone-dry to lusciously sweet and holds its acidity for decades, taking on a petrol-like note with age that some people love. Albariño, from Spain's Atlantic coast, is salty, peachy and crisp, and Grüner Veltliner, Austria's signature, adds white pepper and green bean to citrus.

Chenin Blanc is the shape-shifter of the Loire: dry, off-dry, sweet and sparkling wines all come from it, all with high acidity, honey and quince notes and remarkable length. It is also South Africa's most planted white.

High acidity pays off at the table. It cuts through fat and salt, it refreshes the mouth between bites, and it stands up to the heat of chilli. An off-dry Riesling with spicy food is the classic example.

Sparkling wine gets its bubbles from a second fermentation that traps carbon dioxide. In the traditional method, used for Champagne, Cava and Crémant, that happens in each bottle, and the wine is aged on its lees, which gives toast and brioche notes. In the tank method, used for Prosecco, it happens in a large pressurised tank, which keeps fresher, simpler fruit. Champagne blends Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier; a wine of Chardonnay alone is called blanc de blancs, and one of red grapes only is blanc de noirs.

Sweet wines need a way to concentrate sugar. Some grapes are infected with noble rot, the botrytis fungus that dries them on the vine, as in Sauternes and Tokaj. Others freeze on the vine for ice wine, or are dried on racks before fermenting, as with Amarone. Whatever the method, high acidity is essential: it is what stops a sweet wine tasting sticky.

Fortified wines have spirit added to raise the alcohol to around 15 to 22 per cent. In Port, from the Douro, the spirit goes in during fermentation, which stops the yeast and leaves natural sweetness. In Sherry it is added after fermentation, so most Sherry is dry. Fortified wines keep well once opened, and the best are among the longest-lived wines there are.

In each case the method matters as much as the grape, so learn the method along with the place.

Grape varieties are not fixed inventions. When two vines cross-pollinate and the seed is planted, the new vine is a genuinely new variety, with genes from both parents. Before DNA profiling, growers guessed at family trees from how the leaves and berries looked. Since the 1990s, work by researchers such as Carole Meredith and José Vouillamoz has confirmed many parentages and overturned others.

Cabernet Sauvignon turned out to be a chance cross of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in south-west France. Chardonnay, Gamay, Aligoté and Melon de Bourgogne are all descended from Pinot Noir and the humble, once-scorned Gouais Blanc. Some crossings were deliberate: Pinotage, South Africa's own grape, is Pinot Noir crossed with Cinsault, and Müller-Thurgau, once thought to be Riesling and Sylvaner, is Riesling and Madeleine Royale.

Do not confuse a crossing with a mutation. Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc are not crosses but mutations of Pinot Noir, still the same variety with a change in skin colour. Clones are similar, small variations within a single variety.

Relatives often share traits, such as acidity or aroma, but place and winemaking still matter more than parentage. The lineage map is best used for exploring and for spotting surprising connections.