Red wine grape varieties

Do you know your grapes? If you always buy the same bottle of wine or grape now is the time to branch out and try something new. Read our guide to the most popular grape varieties and select a new one to try tonight.

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Cousin of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc is a lighter, fresher version best known in the red wines of the Loire (Bourgueil, Chinon and Saumur in particular) and Bordeaux. Examples from northern Italy and eastern Europe are also worth looking out for. The grape is low in tannin and brings notes of raspberry and herbs to a wine with an almost 'crunchy' freshness. A perfect summer drink.
Flavour Hints: raspberry, herbs

The better known Cabernet and undisputed heavyweight champion of the Médoc. Small and tough-skinned, its grapes produce deeply-coloured wine, rich in blackcurrant, mint and green pepper flavours and tannins that enable some to age for decades. Number One red grape variety of the world, it is best known in Bordeaux, but now has been transported to almost every wine-growing region in the world. It sometimes flies solo, but more often it partners Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot or, in Australia, Shiraz.
Flavour Hints: blackcurrant, mint, green pepper, pencil shavings

The most widely planted grape in Spain (where it is known as Garnacha) and the second most planted variety in the world, Grenache produces soft, velvety, high alcohol wines with sweet, ripe blackberry flavour. This makes it good for blending, adding immediate charm and softness to Rioja and weight and fruit to Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It appears all over the southern Rhône and southern France where it also makes luscious, rich, fortified wines (in Roussillon, Maury and Banyuls) and oceans of fruity rosé.
Flavour Hints: blackberry, herbs

A grape very much in vogue thanks to Bordeaux's Pomerol and Saint-Emilion. In California, where it makes concentrated Bordeaux-style wines, it has almost cult status. Supple, soft, rich and velvety even when young and, when used in a blend, smoothes the way for more tannic varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon.
Flavour Hints: plum, creamy toffee, rose petals, tea

Capricious Pinot Noir can make some of the world's greatest wines, breathtaking in complexity. One of the trickiest and most unpredictable grape varieties to grow too, it performs best in the relatively cool climate of Burgundy. Producers all over the world have tried to emulate these superb examples, but few succeed. Some of the more successful attempts come from New Zealand, California, Tasmania, the Loire and north-east Italy.
Flavour Hints: raspberry, strawberry, game

Until the 1970s, Syrah was little known outside the northern Rhône and Australia, where it was and still is that continent's most widely-planted red grape. Since then, thanks to a surge in popularity, it has been planted thoughout the southern Rhône and southern France and is viewed as an 'improver' among the oceans of lesser-thought-of varieties such as Cinsault and Carignan. It is certainly a noble variety producing dark, complex, long-lived wines with powerful, rich berry fruit, particularly in the northern Rhône's Hermitage and Côte-Rôtie.
Flavour Hints: blackberry, herbs, black pepper, leather, tar

Meaning 'early ripener', Tempranillo is a master of disguises at home in Spain - known as Tempranillo in Rioja, Navarra and Aragón, Tinto Fino in Ribera del Duero, Cencibel in the centre and Ull de Llebre throughout Catalonia. It is Spain's most noble variety, making stylish wines with strawberry and sour cherry flavours that combine perfectly with the flavours of oak in the Reserva and Gran Reserva wines. A small amount is also grown in Portugal and Argentina.
Flavour Hints: strawberry, cherry