Up-and-coming grape varieties

Jancis Robinson

Saturday 31 January 2026 • 1 min read

Favourites among the quirkier vine varieties. A shorter version of this article, with fewer recommendations, is published by the Financial Times.

One massive change in the range of wines available today as compared with even as recently as 10 years ago is the proliferation of grape varieties. Indeed nowadays I often attend professional tastings at which there isn’t a single Cabernet Sauvignon on the table, and only a handful of Chardonnays.

Among better-known alternative varieties Malbec has had its years in the sun, thanks to the skill of Argentina’s wine producers. Uruguay has done the same for Tannat. Grenache/Garnacha has become far more respected and popular than it used to be, as witness the fine examples now being made all over Spain and in Australia where there is also considerable experimentation with the lauded grape of Barolo and Barbaresco, Nebbiolo.

All over Europe, local grapes are being substituted for the international darlings Cabernet and Chardonnay. Austrians, for instance, are now intensely proud of their Grüner Veltliner, Blaufränkisch and even Zweigelt rather than feeling they have to grow imported French vine varieties. Throughout Italy the country’s myriad indigenous vines, notably but by no means exclusively Sangiovese, are being re-evaluated, and all those Supertuscans based on bordeaux varieties now look rather old hat. French varieties such as Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc that might once have been regarded as ‘second tier’ – not as famous and widespread as their relatives Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay – are now getting the respect they deserve and can be found well outside their current stronghold, the Loire Valley. Hot spots include the higher reaches of Mendoza for Cabernet Franc and many a South African wine district for Chenin Blanc.

Sauvignon Blanc is now more popular in many quarters – including Napa Valley – than the world’s most-planted pale-skinned grape Chardonnay, and its relative Sauvignon Gris has become a regular blending partner with it in dry white bordeaux and Touraine. Galicia’s Albariño and Godello have proved that Spain can produce top-quality dry whites as well as reds, and their names are increasingly found on labels – and not just locally.

But how about more obscure grape varieties? Here are a few of my current favourites, more whites than reds.

Greece is an extraordinarily fertile hunting ground. Few wine drinkers who spend any time on the popular holiday island of Santorini fail to fall for its leading white wine grape Assyrtiko (sometimes blended with the equally local Aïdani and Athiri). Peter Barry of Jim Barry Wines in South Australia’s Clare Valley was one of those tourists and, after years of plant quarantine, from 2017 has been producing creditable Australian Assyrtiko. The grape is brilliantly suited to warm to hot climates as it retains its refreshing acidity, as well as a beguiling sort of lemony pungency, wherever it is planted. It is one of the most successful ‘Mediterranean’ varieties imported into South Africa by leading Swartland producer Eben Sadie for his Sadie Family wines.

The island of Crete has its own special, acid-retaining grapes, of which Vidiano is probably the most promising but unlike Assyrtiko it doesn’t seem to have travelled very far – yet. Like so many of these favourite grapes, it almost became extinct when the world was becoming obsessed by a handful of ‘international’ grapes. (Even a variety as popular today as Viognier was in danger of disappearing altogether from its home in the northern Rhône in the 1960s, just as in the next decade my beloved Godello was on the verge of extinction in its native Valdeorras in Galicia.) Vidiano is probably the most intensely fruity Cretan white wine grape but there is no shortage of them, including Dafni, named after the laurel that powerfully informs its aroma. Superior examples of the Xynisteri of Cyprus are also worth seeking out.

A range of red wine grapes such as Kotsifali and Liatiko is also being rediscovered on Crete but the most obvious current choice for a Greek dark-skinned variety is the much more widely planted Xinomavro that has recently come to the fore as a possible, less-expensive, alternative to the Nebbiolo of Piemonte. Like Nebbiolo, it produces relatively pale reds that are high in both acidity and tannin so, although an increasing number of early-maturing examples are produced, the best examples have real ageing potential. It’s the signature – indeed only – grape of Naoussa and Amyndeo in Macedonia.

UK specialist importers Maltby & Greek have just launched the Three Bowls range of three Greek wines that would serve as excellent introductions to Assyrtiko and Xinomavro, including a pale rosé that’s a blend of the two.

Like Greece, Portugal can boast a rich assortment of indigenous grape varieties and largely escaped Cabernet- and Chardonnay-worship. The obvious candidates are dark-skinned port varieties such as the Touriga Nacional, which probably originated in the Dão region of northern Portugal but has now been planted all over the warming world. But I have a very soft spot for Dão’s Encruzado grape, which can produce white wines with the same sort of depth, structure and potential evolution as a serious, oak-matured white burgundy.

Another of my favourite Portuguese pale-skinned grapes is Arinto, which is so widely planted, and often blended, that it is not necessarily much admired, but I love the steely elegance of the best varietal examples. However, the name is applied to many other varieties (grape nomenclature is a minefield). Arinto dos Açores in the resurgent vineyards of the Azores, for instance, is what Azoreans call the Madeira grape Sercial, which in mainland Portugal is known as Esgana Cão (dog strangler) on account of its remarkably high acidity. All Arinto wines I have come across are remarkably pure and refreshing. Meanwhile, Portugal’s most common white-wine grape is known as both Fernão Pires and Maria Gomes. (See what I mean?) It can also be found in South Africa, Portugal having once been a popular staging post for ships en route for the Cape.

Another Iberian favourite of mine is the dark-skinned Mencía grown in Bierzo and on the steep terraces of Ribeira Sacra in the far north-west of Spain. Its wines are so much juicier and more perfumed than those of Spain’s most-planted dark-skinned grape Tempranillo. When grown on schist, it can produce complex wines worth ageing.

But French grapes are by no means to be ignored. Burgundy’s supposedly ‘lesser’ white wine grape Aligoté, once awfully tart, is now yielding some wonderful wines thanks to warmer summers. An outstanding example is David Moret’s Le Grand A from ancient vines and treated in the cellar as though it were the finest Chardonnay.

I’ve long loved the richly floral Trousseau reds of the Jura; their appeal is so visceral. But although the variety’s home is this eastern subalpine region, it is not widely planted there. Instead it pops up all over the place: in northern Portugal and Madeira as Bastardo; in Galicia called variously Bastardo, Maria Ordoña and Merenzao; and as Trousseau in both California and Oregon. Truly a world traveller.

The pale-pink-skinned mutation of Grenache known as Grenache Gris, or Garnacha Roja or Garnatxa Gris in its Spanish homeland, is another favourite. Its wines seem to have much more nerve and character than most Grenache Blancs and it’s most commonly found in Roussillon, the Languedoc and northern Spain. It’s often blended but is well worth bottling on its own.

Other favourites include the Tintilla de Rota of Cádiz (the same at Rioja’s Graciano), Macabeo (the Viura of Rioja), Fronton’s Négrette, Italy’s Gaglioppo and Timorasso, Savagnin of the Jura … I could go on, but hope already to have sufficiently piqued your thirst for a change from well-trodden paths to familiar bottles.

Less-mainstream wine grapes

Whites

Assyrtiko

Three Bowls Assyrtiko 2025 PGI Peloponnese 12.5%
£15 Maltby & Greek

Kokotos Assyrtiko 2024 PGI Attica 14%
£19.75 Maltby & Greek

Santo Assyrtiko 2023 Santorini 13%
£35 Maltby & Greek, also Strictly Wine, Vinagogo, The Wine Engine

Argyros, Cuvee Evdemon 2020 Santorini 15%
£79.09 Clark Foyster

Oeno P, Tria Ampelia Assyrtiko 2022 Santorini14.5%
£85 Maltby & Greek, £94.90 Hedonism

Vidiano

Douloufakis, Dafnios Vidiano 2025 PGI Crete 13.5%
£19.90 Maltby & Greek, also Strictly Wine, Vinagogo, The Wine Engine

Oenops Vidiano 2023 Crete 13%
£24.95 Vin Cognito and many other retailers

Xynisteri

Tsiakkas Xynisteri 2024 PGI Lemesos 12.5%
£22 Amathus

Encruzado

Quinta dos Roques 2023 Dão 13.5%
£23.50 The Wine Society

Arinto dos Açores (Sercial)

Azores Wine Co, Arinto dos Açores 2024 Pico 12%
£38.50 Amathus

Aligoté

David Moret, Le Grand A Aligoté, Vin de France 2024 12.5%
£24.50 Vin Cognito

Grenache Gris

Momento Grenache Gris 2019 Western Cape 13.5%
£20.40 or £122.40 for six Lay & Wheeler

M Chapoutier, Bila-Haut Chrysopée 2024 Collioure 14.4%
£198 per case of 6 in bond Millesima UK

Reds

For tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates see our vast tasting notes database. For international stockists, see Wine-Searcher.com.

Back to basics

Grape families

Now that DNA profiling can be applied to vine varieties, we can trace all sorts of intriguing relationships between them. One of the most significant families has Pinot and an obscure grape called Gouais Blanc at the head with offspring including Chardonnay, Aligoté and the principal grapes of both Beaujolais and Muscadet. The extended family, in which Savagnin plays a significant role, encompasses more than 150 varieties including all the well-known bordeaux grapes, Viognier, Syrah, Chenin Blanc, Grüner Veltliner, Trousseau and Syrah.

Savagnin is a parent of both Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc. Cabernet Sauvignon turns out to be the offspring of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, which historical records suggest probably originated in the Basque country in northern Spain and in the Loire Valley respectively. Cabernet Franc is also a parent of Merlot.

What the northern Rhône’s signature grapes Syrah and Viognier probably have in common is the Savoie grape Mondeuse Blanche as a parent but there are still many mysteries to unravel, such as the likely identity of the other parent of Viognier. DNA analysis can reveal a parent–offspring relationship between varieties but not always which one is the parent.

For much more detail, and family trees, see our 1,242-page, award-winning 2012 book Wine Grapes: A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours.

Image by Photoongraphy on Shutterstock.

Share this Story