Discovery
Explore by taste
Describe the wine you want rather than naming one. Leave anything you do not care about unset — an unset axis is genuinely unconstrained, not quietly defaulted.
Wine is not two-dimensional. Plotting it on a plane produces a picture that looks explanatory while hiding the fourteen axes the designer discarded to make it fit, and two wines that end up adjacent may have nothing in common. So this sets the dimensions you care about, leaves the rest alone, and tells you for every result which of your requirements it actually meets. See the taste model.
Or just say what you want
Each of these sets the axes below for you, and says what it took you to mean.
White
Sparkling
Start from a common request
Or set it yourself
49 wines fit
Looking for: body full; tannin powerful.
Showing the 24 closest of 49.
Barolo
meets everythingNebbiolo from a small group of Piedmontese hills: pale in colour, ferocious in tannin, and scented of tar and roses.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Brunello di Montalcino
meets everythingPure Sangiovese from a warm Tuscan hill town, aged for years before release — Italy’s most powerful expression of the grape.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Barbaresco
meets everythingBarolo’s neighbour: the same Nebbiolo, a slightly warmer site and a shorter ageing requirement, giving a marginally more approachable wine.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Nebbiolo
meets everythingThe grape of Barolo and Barbaresco: pale in colour, ferocious in tannin, and among the most perfumed reds in the world.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Aglianico
meets everythingSouthern Italy’s most structured red variety, producing tannic, savoury, ageworthy wines in Campania and Basilicata.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Taurasi
meets everythingAglianico grown at altitude in Campania — extremely tannic, savoury and long-lived, often called the Barolo of the south.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Baga
meets everythingBairrada’s difficult, tannic, high-acid variety, capable of remarkable longevity when handled well.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Bairrada Baga
meets everythingPortugal’s most tannic and high-acid red, from a damp Atlantic region — difficult, distinctive and long-lived.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Mavrud
meets everythingBulgaria’s most distinctive indigenous red — dark, tannic and slow to ripen, grown almost entirely around Plovdiv.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Cabernet Sauvignon
The world’s most planted red wine grape: thick-skinned, tannic and blackcurrant-scented, and the backbone of Bordeaux’s left bank.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Red Bordeaux
The blended Cabernet–Merlot benchmark: structured, cedary and built to age, with two distinct characters depending on which bank of the river it comes from.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Sangiovese
Italy’s most planted variety and the grape behind Chianti and Brunello — high in acid, firm in tannin, and built for food.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Syrah
A peppery, dark-fruited variety that produces two recognisably different wines depending on climate — and two different names to match.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Northern Rhône Syrah
Cool-climate Syrah at its most savoury: black pepper, olive and cured meat over dark fruit, with firm structure at moderate alcohol.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Priorat
Dense, mineral Garnacha and Cariñena from steep slate terraces in Catalonia — one of only two Spanish regions at the top classification tier.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Vintage Port
The pinnacle: Port from a single exceptional year, bottled young and matured in bottle for decades.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Cahors
Malbec in its French homeland: darker, firmer and more savoury than the Argentine version.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Chianti Classico Gran Selezione
The top tier of Chianti Classico, introduced in 2013: estate fruit only, longer ageing, and since 2023 a higher Sangiovese minimum.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Chianti Classico Riserva
Chianti Classico held back for longer ageing before release — denser, more structured and longer-lived.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon
Cassis, mint and eucalyptus from a narrow strip of red terra rossa soil — Australia’s most distinctive Cabernet.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon
Structured, refined Cabernet from a strongly maritime corner of Western Australia — the New World region closest to Bordeaux in balance.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Mourvèdre
A late-ripening, sun-demanding variety giving dark, gamey, firmly structured wine — the M in a GSM blend.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Naoussa Xinomavro
Pale, austere, ferociously tannic northern Greek red scented of dried tomato and olive — the closest thing to Barolo outside Piedmont.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
Saperavi
Georgia’s principal red variety, and one of the few grapes with red flesh as well as red skin.
- Body: can be medium-plus
- Tannin: can be high
What the results mean
A wine matches an axis when its recorded range covers the level you asked for, not when its midpoint happens to land there. Asking for a medium-bodied red returns every red capable of being medium-bodied, which is the honest answer: a category genuinely spans a range, and pretending otherwise would hide most of what you could actually buy.
Where a wine misses one of your requirements it is still shown if it is close, with the miss marked. A near-match presented openly is more useful than a shorter list that quietly drops it — or, worse, one that includes it and says nothing.