The Grapes Unknown

From aglianico to zweigelt, exotic varieties make wine tasting more exciting--and often less expensive.

By Elin McCoy
Bloomberg Markets November 2007

At last count, Steve De Long had tasted wines made from 211 different grape varieties. The licensed architect's latest discovery is biancolella, a white Italian grape found on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. "The wine was almondy and citrusy, nutmeg spicy," he says with a hint of triumph.

De Long and his wife, Deborah, created and publish De Long's Wine Grape Varietal Table. The cleverly designed chart describes how wines made from 184 white and red grapes taste. In 2005, the De Longs started the Wine Century Club for oenophiles like themselves who've tried wines from at least 100 grape varieties.

They're tapping into today's vogue for wines made from obscure grapes that are grown in unfamiliar regions. One of these is txakoli (pronounced CHA-koh-lee), a white that's now hot in New York and San Francisco. It's a spritzy, citrusy wine made mostly from the hondarribi zuri grape in Spain's Basque country. Or consider two newly popular reds from Austria I love: dark, spicy cherry-flavored blaufränkisch and soft, fruity and peppery zweigelt.

In the past few years, I've spotted growing numbers of esoteric wines on retail shelves and restaurant lists. I trace the origin of this diversity trend, which I believe is no passing vino-geek fad, to the craze for Austrian grüner veltliner that started a decade ago.

So if you're still sticking close to top-10 international classics such as cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and pinot noir, it's time to loosen up and explore. "Trying new grapes makes wine drinking fun and exciting," says Wine Century Club member Don Romano, who figures he's bagged close to 180. "It's too bad when people are comfortable buying a $100 wine they've heard of but are afraid to try an unknown $15 Spanish grape."

That brings me to the other reward for risking the unknown: saving money. Most of these wines offer new thrills for less than $20 and are exceptional values in a world where even indifferent California cabs can run $40 and up.

There are several thousand types of wine grapes worldwide. Italy's Ministry of Agriculture has cataloged 350 principal ones in that country alone, and it may be home to 1,000 or more. Of course, some produce wines that are simple, rustic and pretty mediocre, but top producers in Italy and elsewhere have been turning serious attention to the best local varieties. It's not just national pride; they're convinced that wines such as Italy's aglianico and Greece's xinomavro offer unique tastes in a world of same-old chardonnays.

The increased availability of these exotic grapes owes much to small specialist importers such as André Tamers of Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based De Maison Selections Inc. Tamers got so excited about Basque wines that he willingly spent several years convincing distributors to carry them. "Now he's the king of txakoli," says Mani Dawes, co-owner of my favorite New York tapas bar, Tía Pol in Chelsea. "We don't offer Riojas by the glass; people know about them already," she says. They're pouring four txakolis from De Maison instead, as well as bargains such as 2005 Pucho, an unoaked red made from the mencia grape in the trendy Bierzo region. So many customers asked Dawes where they could buy the wines that she opened a wine shop, Tinto Fino, last fall.

What else is poised to take off? I've long been a fan of southern Italian varieties such as Campania's nutty and smoky white, fiano di avellino, and the newly collectible Umbrian red, sagrantino di montefalco, with its violet scent and rich, spicy flavors. My first tastes of many of the latter came from the all-Italian list at New York's I Trulli, which also expanded into a wine shop, Vino.

In fact, cutting-edge sommeliers at hot restaurants and wine bars are among the best guides to the latest obscure labels worth drinking. At San Francisco's CAV Wine Bar & Kitchen, for example, wine director Pamela Busch offers a weekly tasting flight of several of her 325 offbeat selections. Two recent ones featured superb Greek wines, including my white favorites, edgy assyrtiko and fragrant moschofilero, and exotics from Croatia and Slovenia, whose wines are just beginning to trickle in.

Dozens of boutique retailers in major cities now have good handpicked selections of obscure wines. One shop that makes it easy to be adventurous is Bottlerocket, which opened last year in New York's Flatiron district. Wines are arranged on 18 themed kiosks by how they'll be consumed. So instead of grabbing that sauvignon blanc to serve with your striped bass, you might be tempted to pick up the Italian arneis next to it.

More grapes are coming. Bernard Magrez, who owns 35 properties worldwide, including Bordeaux's Château Pape Clément, says he was astonished by the quality of a Japanese wine he'd tasted made from koshu, an indigenous white grape. "It was aromatic like sauvignon blanc but with the complexity of a sauvignon- semillon blend," he says. It was so good that he's working on a joint-venture bottling with Japanese winery Katsunuma, whose Aruga Branca koshu wines are served in business and first class on Japan Airlines flights.

The De Longs' chart will soon need an update.

Columnist ELIN McCOY is based in New York. emcwine@aol.com

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