Get to know a new grape or two

One of wine’s chief attractions is its astonishing diversity. The drink may come in only two colours (well, three if you count pink), but beneath that there are hundreds – nay, thousands – of subsets and possibilities that imbue the act of opening a bottle of wine with a sense of adventure. Different vintages, different countries, different vineyards, different winemakers… all play a role in giving a wine its own personality. And then there’s grape variety. Here we find a breadth of vocabulary few other plant species can match. There are more than 10,000 known varieties of Vitis Vinifera in the world. Of these, around 800 are made into wine.