Six grapes worth knowing
There are something like ten thousand named wine grapes, and a small number of them account for most of what gets poured anywhere.
That is a supply chain rather than a verdict: the varieties that travelled are the ones that travelled well, and once a market learns a name, that name is easier to sell than an unfamiliar one.
Here are six that mostly stayed where they were.
Saperavi
From Georgia, and one of the very few grapes in the world with red flesh as well as red skin. The wines are dark to the point of being opaque, with sharp acidity underneath genuinely serious tannin, and a sour-cherry and iron register that keeps them from ever feeling heavy.
It is the most immediately convincing grape on this list for anyone who already likes big red wine. Bring it to lamb.
Rkatsiteli
The Georgian white that gets fermented on its skins in clay more often than not. Made that way it is quince, walnut and dried herb, with a tannic pull that catches people off guard. Made without skin contact it is brisk and green-apple-ish and considerably less interesting.
Areni
Armenian, grown very high — vineyards at 1,400 metres and above. Thin-skinned, pale, with red fruit and a fine dusty tannin that puts people in mind of Pinot Noir until the finish arrives with more grip than Pinot has.
The cave at Areni is where an early winemaking site was excavated, which is a nice piece of trivia and tells you nothing about how the wine tastes. It tastes like altitude.
Öküzgözü
Anatolian, and the friendliest thing on this list. Soft, juicy, red-berried, moderate in tannin and alcohol both. It is routinely blended with the firmer Boğazkere to give that wine some flesh, but on its own it is the bottle you open on a Tuesday.
Narince
A white from the Tokat region of Anatolia, and a genuinely good one — lemon, honeysuckle and a waxy weight in the mouth, with enough acidity to stay upright. Handles a little oak or a little skin contact equally well, which is rare.
Obeidi
Lebanese, from the Bekaa, and traditionally the base of arak rather than of table wine. A handful of growers now make it as a still white and it is a striking thing: pithy, herbal, almost bitter at the edges, and very obviously grown somewhere hot and dry.
None of these are difficult wines. They are unfamiliar ones, which is a different thing entirely — and unfamiliarity takes a glass to fix.
Every one of them deserves a way in: something alongside it you already know, and a line about what it actually does. That is the whole job of writing a selection well.