Most wine drinkers could probably name a handful of grape varieties. The odds are they’d mostly be French and the ones you’d commonly see one on labels in supermarkets. Curiously though they’d generally be on bottles that aren’t from France as the French mostly put place names, like Bordeaux or Chablis not varieties on their labels. The best known would include Chardonnay, Sauvignon blanc, Pinot Grigio and Riesling for whites and Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz (Syrah), Merlot and Pinot Noir for the reds.
These are some of the varieties most popular in the New World used to market the wines as their place names aren’t as well known as the historic European regions. There are though thousands of varieties across the globe, but you’d never guess it. Discovering new ones is fun whether you are a wine drinker or a wine maker and the later do plenty of the former so in places like Australia they are forever planting new ones, but the numbers are small compared to the main ones.
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In 2012 in Australia there were about 25,000 hectares of Chardonnay out of 57,000 ht of white grapes in total. Fiano, a variety from Campania in Southern Italy had 107ht, which is about 100 more than I was expecting. As for reds there was 42,000ht of shiraz out of a total of 91,000. There were 575ht of Sangiovese, the main variety in Chianti.
Jacob’s Creek, who take a fair chunk of the Chardonnay and Shiraz are trying to diversify and are working with Fiano and Sangiovese and we’ll be tasting them today on movies and booze.
Both wines are available in O’Donovan’s Off-Licence group throughout Co. Cork for €??. They are also available in Tesco for €12.25
Martin Moran MW, @winerepublic
