Grape guide
More than a thousand grape varieties are grown for wine worldwide. In a Swiss shop you will meet maybe twenty of them.
All ten below are in our warehouse. For at least half of them we would bet you have never read the name. That is not a coincidence, that is the reason we exist.
In the nineties Mencía was considered a grape for simple country wine. Today it carries half of northwestern Spain. From the Ribeira Sacra it comes out taut: dark cherry, violets, wet earth, an edge that reads as salt. From Bierzo it is rounder and fruitier.
The comparison with Pinot Noir gets made a lot. On texture it holds up, on flavour it misleads. With braised lamb or grilled vegetables it is hard to beat, and it never gets so heavy that it flattens the food.
Thirty years ago there were barely any Godello vines left. Today some of Spain's best white wines come from this grape. Stone fruit, white blossom, hazelnut, and a texture that is almost waxy.
Godello needs food with substance: pan-fried fish, mushroom risotto, chicken with herb butter. Compare it to white Burgundy and you are right about the weight and wrong about the price, in your favour.
Sousón is one of the Galician varieties that predate phylloxera. It gives almost black wines with an acidity that comes across as rude at first. On the second sip it makes sense.
Usually it sits in a blend and gives other grapes a backbone. On its own it is being taken more seriously. Put it next to something fatty and it clears the way.
The best known name on this list, and still far too rarely in a Swiss glass. Albariño brings citrus, peach, a hint of sea salt and acidity without sharpness.
With anything that comes out of the water. Less well known is the other side: with lees ageing and a few years in bottle, the aperitif wine turns into something that hides from no serious white.
One of Spain's most planted red varieties, and hardly anyone knows the name. For decades Bobal went into bulk wine and grape concentrate. What survived in Utiel-Requena are old bush vines nobody bothered with for a long time.
Dark berries, plum, lavender, earth, and an acidity you would not expect in southeastern Spain. With game and aged hard cheese. We wrote a whole piece about it.
Treixadura is the leading grape of the Ribeiro. Apple, pear, a bit of peach, fresh herbs, and a texture that is soft rather than sharp.
It is the proof that Galician white does not always have to mean freshness. Inma Pazos at Coto de Gomariz makes wines from it with body that take a year in the cellar comfortably.
Caiño is not a single variety but a family: Caiño Tinto, Caiño Bravo, Caiño Longo. What they share is high acidity, firm tannins and a herbal streak.
This is not a wine that meets you halfway. It asks you to come to it, ideally with food on the table. If you try nothing else from this list, try this one.
In France it is Trousseau, in Portugal Bastardo, in the Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras Merenzao. Same grape, three names, three wine worlds.
The wines are pale, almost translucent, with red berry, herbs and a fine floral note. If you like Pinot and want something you do not know yet, start here.
Garnacha can be forgettable. At high yields it turns thin and sweetish, and that is exactly how most people know it. At low yields and on old vines it becomes the opposite: red fruit, herbs, fine tannin, warmth without weight.
With charcuterie, with anything off the grill, with everything that tastes like summer.
The rarest on this list. Brancellao had almost disappeared and is back in small parcels today. Deep purple in the glass, on the nose berry jam, violets, almond blossom, a trace of liquorice.
If you find a bottle, take it. There are not many.
Native varieties have adapted to their place over centuries. They handle the heat, the drought and the diseases of their region better than the international standards that get planted everywhere because they sell everywhere.
That is not a side argument. If varieties like Brancellao or Caiño disappear, the knowledge of how to grow them and bring them into the cellar goes with them. Every bottle keeps a parcel alive.
If you want to drink your way through this list and do not know where to begin: Godello if it should be white. Mencía from Bierzo if it should be red. Both are approachable enough for the first evening and interesting enough for the second.
Handverlesene Weine aus den Regionen, die wir in diesem Artikel vorstellen – direkt aus der Schweiz bestellen.
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