Grapes
Wine grape varieties
192 varieties, each with a structured taste profile that shows the range as well as the typical — because "what does Chardonnay taste like" has no single answer.
Start here
The varieties that account for most of what you will encounter.
Red
Cabernet Sauvignon
The world’s most planted red wine grape: thick-skinned, tannic and blackcurrant-scented, and the backbone of Bordeaux’s left bank.
White
Chardonnay
The most adaptable white grape in the world, and the one most often blamed for what winemakers do to it.
Red
Malbec
A dark, velvety variety that struggled in its French homeland and became Argentina’s national grape.
Red
Merlot
A plush, plum-scented Bordeaux variety that ripens earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon and produces softer, rounder wine.
White
Pinot Gris
A pink-skinned mutation of Pinot Noir that makes two utterly different wines depending on whether the label says Gris or Grigio.
Red
Pinot Noir
A thin-skinned, difficult, site-sensitive variety that produces the most perfumed and transparent red wines in the world.
White
Riesling
The most transparent and longest-lived white variety, made from bone dry to intensely sweet and almost never oaked.
Red
Sangiovese
Italy’s most planted variety and the grape behind Chianti and Brunello — high in acid, firm in tannin, and built for food.
White
Sauvignon Blanc
A pungently aromatic variety whose character swings from flinty and restrained in the Loire to explosively tropical in Marlborough.
Red
Shiraz
The Australian name for Syrah, used to signal the riper, fuller, sweeter-fruited style the country made famous.
Red
Syrah
A peppery, dark-fruited variety that produces two recognisably different wines depending on climate — and two different names to match.
Red
Tempranillo
Spain’s leading red variety, giving savoury, leather-and-cherry wines that are shaped as much by oak ageing as by the grape itself.
Red grapes (86)
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White and pink-skinned grapes (106)
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Related
Styles
Wine styles
A grape is a plant; a style is a finished wine. This is where the wide ranges resolve into something specific.
Compare
Grape comparisons
Cabernet vs Merlot, Malbec vs Shiraz, Syrah vs Shiraz — side by side on the same dimensions.
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If you like this, try…
Start from a grape you know and travel in a direction you choose.