Contents [Hide] 1 Popular Red Wine Grape Varieties 2 General Temperature Guidelines 3 Related Guides 4 External Links

Red Wines

There are over 1,000 grape varieties in the world, only a fraction of which are suitable for wine making--which of course leaves an even smaller fraction suitable for red wine making. Right now, the world wine market focuses on about 40 to 50 different red wine grape varieties, the majority of which are listed below.

Popular Red Wine Grape Varieties

• Anglianico: At its best, Aglianico makes dark, powerful red wines of high quality. But its production is relatively small, and in many cases the variety is merely part of a blend with other varieties of Southern Italy. Nevertheless, it is one of Italy's finest red varieties, and has excellent potential.

• Barbera: Barbera  is a very unusual red variety because it has almost no tannin. It does have deep colour and high acidity, as well as the intense spicy and red-fruit aromas and flavours found in young wines. The combination of high acid, low tannin, and vivid flavour makes Barbera wines particularly refreshing. The finest expressions of Barbera are non-blended, and similar in taste to Merlot.
• Food Pairings: Barbera wines are versatile: they match many dishes, including tomato sauces.
• Grape Production: Originally a red wine grape of Italy, it is common in California (USA) as well.
• Textures and Flavours: Juicy black cherry and plum fruit, with a silky texture and excellent acidity.

• Cabernet Franc: Cabernet Franc  is a French variety that has grown in Italy's north-eastern regions for more than a century; today, its use is declining somewhat in favour of Cabernet Sauvignon (with which it is often blended).

• Cabernet Sauvignon: Widely accepted as one of the world's best varieties. Cabernet Sauvignon  is often blended with Cabernet Franc and Merlot. It usually undergoes oak treatment.
• Food Pairings: Best with simply prepared red meat.
• Grape Production: Cabernet Sauvignon is planted almost wherever red wine grapes grow. It is part of the great red Médoc  wines of France, and among the finest reds in Australia, California (USA) and Chile.
• Textures and Flavours: Full-bodied, but firm and gripping when young. With age the grip fades away, and the rich currant qualities of the Cabernet Sauvignon yield to a more oak-based flavour. Certain bottles include green bell pepper, eucalyptus, and mint flavours.

• Canaiolo: Canaiolo Nero, as it's officially known, produces slightly bitter, rather bland wine that becomes part of the traditional blend for Chianti.  This variety, sometimes called Cagnina, is occasionally made into a red dessert wine by that same name. Canaiolo has many synonyms including Caccione Nero, Tindilloro, Uva Canina, and Uva Merla.
• Food Pairings: This wine goes best with traditional Tuscan fair, heavy meats and tomato and pepper based sauces.
• Grape Production: This grape variety is predominantly produced in Tuscany, Italy.
• Textures and Flavours: The best can be a nice combination of very ripe strawberries and leather, but the worst are used to soften the Chianti wine blends and not much else.

• Carignan/Carignane: Although this red grape originated in northern Spain's Cariñena district, it's become the most widely grown red grape in France, especially throughout the Languedoc-Roussillon region. With its high yields, Carignan  produces more red wine than any other grape variety, but because of its less than extraordinary flavours, it is often blended with wines from softer grapes, primarily Grenache and Cinsault. In France most of these wines end up as ordinary table wines.
• Grape Production: Northern Spain, France, Italy, Algeria, Israel.
• Textures and Flavours: This grape is noted for its deep purple colour, high tannins, and high alcohol. At its best, Carignan produces wines that are fruity and spicy.

• Carménère: Though originally grown in France, Carménère  was brought over to Chile in the late 1800's where it still remains the predominant flavour of their regional wines. With Carmenère, Chileans produce wines with a plumy fruit flavour reminiscent of Merlot, and a firm structure, similar to Cabernet Sauvignon. The grape also adds a sizeable dose of pepper and spice, which helps distinguish it from other Chilean varieties.
• Grape Production: This grape is predominantly grown in Chile.
• Textures and Flavours: Plummy, spicy, black fruit, rustic, rich.

• Corvina: Most Corvina -based wines have a light to medium body, high acidity, medium tannin, and flavours of red cherries. It has great potential as a stand-alone variety of fine wines.

• Dolcetto: Dolcetto  is a variety that's quite important in Piedmont, Italy, where it's valued not only for its deep colour and spicy, berry character, but also for its early-ripening tendency.

• Gamay: Gamay,  a wine that actually tastes like grapes, is low in tannin and high in popularity throughout the Beaujolais district of France.

• Grenache/Garnacha: The grenache  or garnacha  grape creates a wine high in alcohol, and with sweet, peppery flavours.

• Lagrein Scuro: This grape--simply referred to as "Legrein"--is an historic variety in Alto Adige, Italy. It makes perfumed, medium-bodied reds and light rosés, as well as some rich, dark red wines.

• Lambrusco: An ancient, native Italian variety, Lambrusco  is widely popular in the United States. This grape has delicious flavours of red fruits and spice, medium tannin, and high acidity.

• Malbec: Originally a common grape in Bordeaux, Malbec  has increased its status in the French region of Cahors, where they create distinctive wines that require 70% of the variety. The grape's made an even more prosperous home in the developing wine region of Argentina, where Malbec has become the country's national grape. Malbec is often blended with varieties such as Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petit Verdot  to make Bordeaux style wines.
• Food Pairings: All types of meat-based meals.
• Grape Production: Malbec has its origins in the French Bordeaux region, but today it is more widely recognised in the French Cahors regions, and in Argentina. It is also available in Chile, Australia, and in the cooler Californian regions of the USA.
• Textures and Flavours: Malbec’s characteristics vary greatly depending on where it is grown and how it is transformed. Generally it produces a smooth, well coloured wine that tastes of plums, berries, and spices. In Argentina, the grape produces spicy wines reminiscent of blackberries and chocolate, with a velvety texture. In Cahors, it makes quickly matured and full bodied wines, with dark and sometimes gamy--but delicious--flavours.

• Merlot: Merlot  is a smooth, fruity wine often described as soft and easily drinkable. The Merlot-based wines usually have a medium body with hints of berry, plum, and currant. Its softness and "fleshiness", combined with its earlier ripening, makes Merlot a popular grape for blending with the sterner, later-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon, which tends to be higher in tannin.
• Food Pairings: Merlot wines couple nicely with most foods.
• Grape Production: A key element in the Bordeaux blend, Merlot is the most commonly grown grape in France. However, it is also grown in Italy, Romania, California and Washington States of the USA, Chile, Australia, and other regions.
• Textures and Flavours: Typical scents include black cherry, plums and herbal flavours, with rounded, medium body and textures. The Merlot type of wine has less tannin than heavier wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon.

• Molinara: Molinara is a red Italian wine grape grown primarily in the Veneto region of north-eastern Italy. It adds acidity to the blends Valpolicella  and Bardolino made with Corvina and Rondinella. The wine's high propensity for oxidation, coupled with its low colour extract, has caused a decline in favour and plantings among Venetian vineyards.

• Montepulciano: Montepulciano  produces medium-bodied wines with unusual smoky, red-fruity, and vegetative flavours; these wines range from great tasting to laughable.

• Mourvédre: Mourvèdre  is best known for its blending role in the Southern Rhone, but it is also used as the primary grape in wines from Jumilla and other South-east areas of Spain--where the grape originated. The desirable aspects of Mourvèdre as a blending grape are its good colour (from thick skins), high acid, and high tannins. These attributes offset the lighter colour, lower acid and lower tannins of its Rhone  (and sometimes Australian & Spanish) partner, Grenache. Mourvèdre is rarely bottled as a single variety, but some parts of Spain and California have been successful cultivating the grape for its own wines, with outstanding results.
• Grape Production: Southern Rhone (France), Spain, Australia, California (USA).
• Textures and Flavours: Meaty, rustic, blackberry, leathery, herbs, spicy, gamy.

• Nebbiolo: Nebbiolo  is the key Italian grape in Barolo  and Barbaresco  wines, and also in some of the fine Ghemme and Gattinara wines of Piedmont, Italy. Some wines from Nebbiolo can seem overly tannic and acidic when young, but as they mature, they become extremely velvety. It's a grape with the toughness of tar and earth, and with the soft, floral character of roses; a combination that creates a nice flavour balance. Many winemakers create Nebbiolo wines--such as Nebbiolo d'Alba --that are drinkable when young. These affordable representations of Nebbiolo can be quite delicious and give the drinker a preview of the intricacies and complexity of a mature Barolo or Barbaresco.
• Grape Production: Nebbiolo is a grape native to Piedmont, Italy. Because of its finicky soil preferences, it has had little success growing elsewhere, and has therefore become the honoured red grape of Northern Italy.
• Textures and Flavours: Tar and roses are the descriptors most often used for Nebbiolo wines. Other descriptors include violets, blackberry, wild cherry, and truffles.

• Negroamaro: Negroamaro  is a native variety that's widely planted in the South of Italy, especially Puglia; it makes flavourful, high-alcohol wines.

• Nero D'Avola: Nero D'Avola  is high quality variety—known as Calabrese in its native Calabria—is important mainly in Sicily. It makes deeply coloured, age-worthy wines that are full-bodied and moderate in tannin. It has heady flavours of ripe fruit and herbs.

• Petite Sirah: Grown mainly in California (USA), this red wine grape produces a big, robust and peppery wine. Although not as popular as California's Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir or Zinfandel, Petite Sirah  has a following among those who like big, full-bodied wines. The Petite Sirah grape is also used as a blending grape to give zest and complexity to other red wines.

• Pinot Nero: This variety is significant throughout Italy, in the North-east, Lombardy, and in the North-west, for both still and sparkling wines. Because it's one of the world's major red varieties, winemakers in various other regions, including Piedmont and Tuscany, are trying their hands with it.

• Pinot Noir: One of the noblest red wine grapes. Pinot Noir  is difficult to grow, rarely blended, with no roughness.
• Food Pairings: Excellent with grilled salmon, chicken, and lamb.
• Grape Production: Makes the great reds of Burgundy in France, and good wines from Austria, California and Oregon regions of the USA, and New Zealand.
• Textures and Flavours: The structure is delicate and fresh. The tannins are very soft, and the aromatics are very fruity (cherry, strawberry, plum), often with notes of tea-leaf, damp earth, or worn leather.

• Pinotage: A South African cross of Pinot Noir and Cinsaut,  this red-wine grape was bred in 1925, but did not become popular until 1959 when it won the top award in South Africa's Cape Young Wine Show. Pinotage  is now extensively grown in South Africa, and is cultivated in small amounts throughout regions of California (US) and New Zealand. The best examples of Pinotage wines are medium-bodied and subtly flavoured--better than most Cinsaut wines but not as good as Pinot Noir.

• Primitivo: Primitivo  makes deeply coloured wines with spicy, ripe berry character, full body, and high alcohol.

• Rondinella: Rondinella is an Italian wine grape mainly grown in the Veneto region of Italy and used in wines such as Valpolicella and Bardolino. The grape has rather neutral flavours, and is often blended with Corvina and Molinara. Like Carignan, it is favoured by growers due to its prolific yields. The vine is very resistant to grape disease and, although the grapes don't necessarily have high sugar levels, they do dry out well for use in the production of straw wines and recioto blends.

• Sangiovese: Sangiovese  is the most planted red variety in Italy's vineyards. It is the major grape of Chianti and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano,  and the only variety in Brunello di Montalcino.  Many critically acclaimed Super-Tuscan wines also derive largely from Sangiovese--Super-Tuscans are expensive wines with proprietary and often fanciful names and heavy bottles. Common blending partners for Sangiovese include the Canaiolo grape, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. The characteristics of Sangiovese include a medium intensity of colour, high acidity, firm tannin, and aromas and flavours of cherries and herbs. Most wines made from Sangiovese are lean in structure, and medium-bodied--though some are light-bodied or full-bodied, depending on where the grapes grow. The more serious wines based on Sangiovese are capable of developing forest-floor aromas and a rich smoothness with age.
• Food pairings: A good choice for Italian and other Mediterranean-style cuisines.
• Grape Production: Sangiovese produces the Chiantis of Italy's Tuscany region and, of late, good wines from California (USA).
• Textures and Flavours: The primary style is medium-bodied with fresh berry and plum flavours.

• Syrah/Shiraz: Shiraz  or Syrah  are two names for the same variety. European vintners only use the name Syrah.
• Food pairings: Meat (steak, beef, wild game, stews, etc.)
• Grape Production: Syrah excels in California (USA), in Australia, and in France's Rhone Valley.
• Textures and Flavours: Syrah contains aromas and flavours of wild black-fruit (such as blackcurrant), with overtones of black pepper spice and roasting meat. The Shiraz variety gives hearty, spicy reds, often complemented by warm alcohol and gripping tannins. Occasionally toffee notes arise from the wine having rested in oak barrels. While Shiraz is used to produce many average wines it can produce some of the world's finest, deepest, and darkest reds with intense flavours and excellent longevity.

• Tempranillo or Tinta Roriz: Tempranillo  is the main grape used in wines from the Spanish regions of Rioja  and Ribera del Duero.  It creates a lighter wine, higher in acid and lower in alcohol, and is consumed only after spending a few years in barrel and bottle--a process that gives it a leathery mouth-feel. In Ribera del Duero, and more recently in Australia, Tempranillo is blended with Garnacha--it has also been successfully blended with Syrah in Australia.
• Food Pairings: The combination of the tart fruit and tannins make this wine very food friendly.
• Grape Production: Spain (Rioja and Ribera del Duero), and recently Australia.
• Textures and Flavours: Red fruits like strawberries and cherries can predominate, but with a rustic edge. Common descriptors include red fruit, cherry, plum, tobacco, leather, and herb flavours.

• Tinta Barroca: Tinta Barroca is a red wine grape that primarily grows in the Douro region of Portugal, and lends its flavours to Port.  It also grows in certain regions of South Africa where it is usually made into varietal wines.

• Tinta Cão: Tinta Cão is a Portuguese red wine grape that has grown primarily in the Douro region since the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, despite the high quality of the grape, the vine produces very low yields which has led to its near extinction. The vine favours cooler climates and can add finesse and complexity to any wine blend.

• Touriga Francesa: Touriga Francesa is a Portuguese red-wine grape that is important in the production of Port. Although Touriga Francesa is lighter and more delicate in body, colour, and flavour than Touriga Nacional, it has a wonderful perfume character that makes it perfect for Port blends.

• Touriga Nacional: Touriga Nacional  is high-quality Portuguese red-wine grape, widely grown in Portugal's Douro region, is the base for some of the best vintage Ports. It is also highly prized in the DÃO region, where it's known simply as Touriga, and where it must represent 20 percent of that region's red-wine blends. This vine yields very small, concentrated berries that produce very dark, fruity, aromatic, and tannin-rich wines. Related sub-varieties include Touriga Fina, Touriga Foiufeira, and Touriga Macho.

• Zinfandel: The versatile Zinfandel,  an exclusively Californian grape, makes everything from blush wine (White Zinfandel ), to rich, heavy reds.
• Food pairings: Depending upon the type of Zinfandel, it pairs well with tomato-sauce pastas, pizza, and grilled and barbecued meats.
• Grape Production: California, USA.
• Textures and Flavours: Often spicy, with berry and pepper tones.

General Temperature Guidelines

Red wines can provide delightful and refreshing flavours, but these flavours can be masked if the wines are not served at the right temperatures. If the temperature is too cold, the subtle flavours and textures will be lost. If the temperature is too warm, the wine will taste somewhat flat and non-refreshing. A common misconception is that you should drink red wine at room temperature, but that is not really true. Most reds taste best between 16°C to 18°C (62°F to 65°F). For more specific guidelines, see chart below.

Sample Red Wines	Temperatures
Beaujolais, Port, Nebbiolo, light and fruity reds	54°F - 59°F (12°C - 15°C)
Simple Pinot Noirs, light Riojas, Argentinian Tempranillo	59°F - 63°F (15°C - 17°C)
Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Bordeaux, Shiraz, large Zinfandels	63°F - 68°F (17°C - 20°C)

Related Guides

Wine	Wine Glasses	Food and Wine Matching	White Wines	Analysing Wine from A to Z

External Links

• FrenchScout.com: Major types of red wine and their origins, food compatibilities, and other characteristics. 
• Wine.com: The most popular red wine grapes and where they grow best.
• 2BASnob.com: Enjoying red wines, major red wine varieties, and red wine storage.
• Dummies.com: The top red grape varieties from Italy.
• WineEducation.com: Characteristics of red wine grapes.
• Epicurious.com: The Wine Dictionary.