All wine experts agree upon the fact that the grape vari­ety (or blend of vari­eties) is, by far, the most influ­en­tial fac­tor deter­min­ing the fla­vor and char­ac­ter of a wine.

As Oz Clarke, the UK’s pop­u­lar “no-nonsense” wine writer, once enthused, “It doesn’t take much to make a wine. In fact, a grape is quite capa­ble of doing it by itself.”

Mer­lot wines are typ­i­cally medium bod­ied with plum flavours and Chardon­nay is usu­ally a fuller bod­ied white wine with trop­i­cal fruit from warm cli­mates and green fruit, crisper flavours from cooler climates.

Grape vari­eties will dif­fer depend­ing on the region in which it is grown. Specif­i­cally, the humid­ity of the area, as well as the soil qual­ity of the vine­yard, deter­mines the qual­ity of the result­ing grapes. Sim­i­larly, any srong wheater con­di­tions or vine­yard pests can not only wipe out an entire grape har­vest, but either one may also thwart the pro­duc­tion of a par­tic­u­lar wine for the whole year.

Learn about the geo­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion, viti­cul­ture, fla­vor and char­ac­ter of each type of grape vari­ety. By under­stand­ing this infor­ma­tion, you can pre­dict dif­fer­ent wine styles and fla­vor blends, as well as the unique body and vini­fi­ca­tion for each.

Start explor­ing and under­stand­ing grape vari­eties. It’s the short­est route to appre­ci­at­ing that deli­cious glass of wine in your hand!

Find out all the facts about the red and white grape vari­eties used in the mod­ern wine indus­try, sim­ply by click­ing on the var­i­ous Grape Names (listed below).