Aligote is most famous as the ‘third’ grape variety of Burgundy, a poor cousin of the more prestigious (and more profitable) Chardonnay. DNA profiling has proven it to be a member of the wider Pinot family, of which Chardonnay is also a member. The variety is at its best in the wines of the regional Bourgogne Aligote appellation, and particularly in Bouzeron, in the northern Cote Chalonnaise. Aligote also has a key role in the sparkling Cremant de Bourgogne wines.

Aligote has been a part of the Burgundian wine landscape for more than 200 years, planted alongside Chardonnay in the region’s vineyards, in some of which it is known by the synonym Plant Gris. It has now found its place in the less highly rated sites, on the plateaux and in the valleys, away from the more expensive land reserved for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Aligote is an early-ripening variety, and is fortunately more frost resistant than its more highly favored cousins, meaning that its presence in these cooler sites is ensured for some time to come. Just south of Burgundy, the Rhone Valley is also home to a small amount of Aligote, notably for use with Chardonnay in the light, fruity white wines of more...

Barbera is a dark-skinned red wine grape variety from the hills of north-western Italy. Found in several Italian wine regions other than its native Piedmont (these include Emilia-Romagna, Puglia, Campania and even the island regions Sicily and Sardinia), it is nation's third most commonly planted red wine grape, behind only the ubiquitous Sangiovese and Montepulciano. Barbera grapes are used both in blended wines and varietals, the latter of which will become increasingly common as Italy continues its move towards varietal labeling.

Most wine authorities cite the Monferrato hills around Asti as the variety's birthplace and the vine has traveled widely in the past two centuries. Its peregrinations have led it most notably to Australia, Argentina and California, most likely shadowing Italian migration patterns more...

Cabernet Sauvignon, colloquially known as 'Cab Sav' or even just 'Cab', is one of the most famous and popular red wine grape varieties on Earth. Having originated in the Medoc, the vine has successfully spread to almost every winegrowing country in the world, including newer viticultural countries such as Australia, Chile, South Africa, the United States and New Zealand.

Cabernet Sauvignon can be grown successfully in a wide variety of environments, but will still be very expressive of its terroir. It is often associated with aromas of black currants and green bell-pepper. However, Old World growing regions in Europe are more likely to produce wines with expressions of dark fruit (cassis) when young, and which develop animal (such as leather) flavors as they age. New World producers, meanwhile, have found variable expressions of the grape, with brighter flavors being produced in cool-climate conditions, but rich and ripe characteristics in warmer areas.

Periquita is one of several synonyms used for the Castelao grape variety – the most widely planted red wine vinifera vine in Portugal. This moniker for the grape is used in in the Terras do Sado wine region, which lies immediately south of Lisbon. The name means 'Parakeet', in reference not to the grape's coloring, but to the Cova de Periquita vineyard where it was first planted by Jose Maria da Fonseca. Jose Maria da Fonseca Periquita wines are still made today.

See Castelao for more information about this grape variety. (© All rights reserved, Wine-Searcher)

Sauvignon Blanc is a white wine grape variety whose spiritual home is western France, but which has successfully made its way into emerging and established wine regions all over the world. While the grape might be more readily associated with the Loire Valley (for its pivotal role in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume), it is more likely to have originated from Bordeaux, where it was typically blended with Semillon – as it still is today.

The late 20th century, however, saw the emergence of a new wine region vying for status as the Sauvignon Blanc region: Marlborough, in the South Island of New Zealand. The rapid development of the Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc phenomenon constitues one of the most dramatic changes ever seen in the wine world.

The intense and readily accessible flavors offered by a classic Marlborough 'Savvy' (as it is informally known in that part of the world) have captured a vast market across the world, from the United States and Canada to the UK and northern Europe, Australia and Japan. In 2011, Marlborough produced roughly 65% of New Zealand's total wine output, and 75% of that was Sauvignon Blanc.

Outside France and New Zealand the variety has proved relatively successful in New World regions such as more...

Zinfandel (or 'Zin' as it is affectionately known in its American homelands) is a dark-skinned red wine grape variety widely cultivated in California. It arrived in the Americas from Europe in the early years of the 19th century, and was an immediate success in its Napa and Sonoma strongholds. It wasn't until DNA research was carried out in California in the 1990s that the variety was confirmed (as had long been suspected) to be Italy's Primitivo under a different name, which is in turn Crljenak Kastelanski, originally from Croatia's Adriatic coast.

Zinfandel has been used to make various styles of wine since it arrived in the United States, including dry and sweet red wines and the famous 'White Zinfandel' blush, created to cater for a white-wine-drinking American consumer base of the 1970s. The arrival of this new wine style in the early 1970s led to an explosion of Zinfandel plantings – a wonderful irony, given that the style was created only to find a use for the swathes of under-used Zinfandel vines already in existence. By the 1990s the popularity of dry red Zinfandel had given these plantings a new raison d'etre, although they were still generating many millions of liters of sweet pink blush every year. Today red Zinfandel has risen to become the signature wine of the United States, not due to the quality of wine it produces, but because it is as close to an 'American' variety as more...