Vintage wine charts for Spanish wine, French wine, Italian wine and more. Wine Language, wine grapes

	Cabernet Sauvignon Small, tough skinned grape that gives the distinction to the red wines of Bordeaux, although always blended with Merlot and sometimes Malbec. The best Medoc vineyards have up to 80% Cabernet, but in St-Emilion and Pomerol the Cabernet Franc is used. Cabernet Sauvignon is widely planted in Australia, where its best wine needs long ageing, in South Africa and in California, where it has scored its greatest successes outside France. All Cabernet wines gain by age in bottle as well as wood.
	Chardonnay The grape of white burgundy (Chablis, Montrachet, Meursault, Pouilly-Fuisse) and Champagne. It gives firm, full, strong wine with scent and character, on chalky soils becoming almost luscious without being sweet. Ages well. Very successful in coastal California, parts of Australia, New Zealand, Bulgaria and, recently, Italy and Spain.
	Chenin Blanc The white grape of Anjou and Touraine on the Loire gives nervy, intense wine, honey like when very ripe but always with high acidity, so it ages well. Its finest wines are Vouvray, Coteaux du Layon, Savennieres; at Vouvray and Saumur it also makes sparkling wine. Often called Pineau de la Loire. A form called Steen is South Africa's favourite white grape. Chenin can also be admirable in California.
	Gamay Only makes first-class wine on the granite hills of Beaujolais, with their sandy soil. In the rest of Burgundy it is an inferior variety, although adequate in certain other parts of France (the Loire, Ardeche), in Switzerland and (alias Napa Gamay) in California. At its best Gamay produces wine that is incomparably light, fruity and gulpable, pale red, or, exceptionally, a dark wine ageing well for six or seven years.
	Grenache A sweet grape making strong wine with character but not much colour, used in a blend to make Chateauneuf du Pape and on its own to make Tavel, the best rose of the Rhone. Known as Garnacha in Rioja, where it is the most important red variety. Used for dessert wines at Banyuls near the Franco Spanish frontier. In Australia and California it makes pleasant roses, which often bear its name.
	Muscat Easy to recognize by its taste and smell, like a hothouse table grape's. Can be black or white. It spread from the Aegean with civilization, to the Crimea, Sicily, Italy and southern Spain. All muscat wine, except in Alsace, Bulgaria and a little from Australia, is sweet – often intensely sweet. The best in France comes from Beaumes de Venise near Avignon. Muscat wines or muscatels are made all over the world. They once included South Africa's Constantia. Australia's 'Liqueur Muscats' are its modern equivalent.
	Pinot Noir The single red grape of the Cote d'Or in Burgundy (Chambertin, Romanee, Corton, Beaune), i.e. the world's best red-wine grape, in the right place. In Champagne it is pressed before fermentation to make white wine, which becomes the greater part of the best champagnes. At its best the scent, flavour, body, texture of its wine are all profound pleasures. It makes light wines in Germany and Eastern Europe, where it goes by various names, and increasingly interesting wines in California and Australia.
	Sauvignon Blanc The chief white Bordeaux grape, used with Semillon and a little Muscadelle to make dry Graves and sweet Sauternes. Makes interesting, clean, lighter wine on its own elsewhere: at Pouilly and Sancerre on the upper Loire and throughout Touraine; in the Dordogne, near Chablis; in northeast Italy, in Chile and in the coastal valleys of California, where its wine can be dry, gold and of considerable character.
	Semillon This grape has the great gift, shared with the Riesling, of rotting nobly. Under certain conditions of warmth and humidity a normally undesirable fungus softens the skin and lets the juice evaporate, concentrating the sugar and flavouring elements and producing luscious, creamy wine. The great golden wines of Sauternes are made like this, with a proportion of Sauvignon, not so subject to 'Pourriture noble'. In Australia Semillon makes wines which, although labelled anything from Riesling to Chablis, can be extremely good.