The grape mapFor keen amateurs

Every grape page on this site has a box called “In the glass”: six scales from the tasting grid of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, the WSET, namely sweetness, acidity, tannin, alcohol, body and flavour intensity. Each of the 65 grapes gets a range on every scale, from its lightest typical wine to its richest. Take two scales as the axes, set each grape at the middle of its ranges, and a map appears. It is not measured but read from the standard descriptions, among them “Wine Grapes” by Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and the Valais geneticist José Vouillamoz. Still, it shows which grapes are neighbours.

Among the whites the most useful pair is acidity and body, which hardly depend on each other: a full wine can be fresh or soft. So the whites fill all four corners. Fresh and light are Räuschling from Lake Zürich, Melon de Bourgogne from Muscadet and Riesling; fresh and full, Completer from Graubünden, Petite Arvine from Valais and Furmint. Soft and full are Viognier, Marsanne and Gewürztraminer, and the soft, light corner belongs to the classic whites of western and eastern Switzerland, Chasselas and Müller-Thurgau. Four of the five most planted whites sit on the fresh side; only Pinot Gris is soft.

To drop at the apéro

Chasselas, Switzerland’s most planted white grape, is the only one of 65 that stays at medium(−) or below for acidity, body and flavour intensity alike: the quietest grape on the map.

• The five most planted white grapes
• Other grapes

Steps of the WSET tasting grid (Level 3, 2022), not measurements. Grapes on the same spot sit in a ring around it; every dot leads to its grape. Airén and Macabeo, which outrank Riesling worldwide, have no page here yet. Source: Weinquiz after WSET, the Oxford Companion and “Wine Grapes”.

Grip and freshness

For red wine the second question is tannin, and it too goes its own way. Nebbiolo and Aglianico have the top corner to themselves, high in both acidity and tannin: wines that need years. Barbera is just as fresh with hardly any grip, Pinot Noir and Gamay fresh and gentle. None of the five most planted reds is reliably fresh: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Tempranillo and Syrah sit in the firm middle, and Grenache alone holds the low corner of both scales, soft, round and warm.

• The five most planted red grapes
• Other grapes

Steps of the WSET tasting grid (Level 3, 2022), not measurements. Grapes on the same spot sit in a ring around it; every dot leads to its grape. Source: Weinquiz after WSET, the Oxford Companion and “Wine Grapes”.

What goes together

Not every pair makes a map. Plot the whites’ alcohol against their body, or the reds’ tannin against theirs, and the dots climb a diagonal; the three reds that are always high in alcohol, Grenache, Zinfandel and Mourvèdre, are all at least medium-bodied. That is no coincidence: alcohol is much of what the palate reads as body. In 2007 an Australian team led by Richard Gawel raised the alcohol of three Rieslings from 11.6 to 13.6 per cent, and in two of them the tasters found the wine fuller and more viscous. Glycerol, often credited with a wine’s weight, had a weaker and less consistent effect.

White grapes: alcohol and body

Red grapes: tannin and body

• The five most planted red grapes
• The five most planted white grapes
• Other grapes

Each dot is a grape at the middle of its ranges and leads to it. Source: Weinquiz after the WSET tasting grid (Level 3, 2022).

A net instead of a dot

A spider chart, one spoke per scale, shows all six at once. Here the five most planted grapes of each colour are bands from their lightest style to their richest, and the width of a band tells the story: Riesling stretches from dry to luscious, as Chenin Blanc, Furmint, Muscat and Gewürztraminer do, while Sauvignon Blanc, almost always dry, fresh and aromatic, is the narrowest of the ten. Read the shape, not the area: alcohol has three steps where sweetness has six, and the order of the spokes alone changes the area.

• One spoke per scale: the lowest step at the centre, the highest at the rim.

Red grapes

• Cabernet Sauvignon
• Merlot
• Tempranillo
• Syrah
• Grenache

White grapes

• Chardonnay
• Trebbiano
• Sauvignon Blanc
• Pinot Gris
• Riesling

Read the shape, not the area: alcohol has three steps where sweetness has six, and the order of the spokes alone changes the area. White grapes have no tannin; their band runs past the dashed spoke. A ring: a sweet style apart from the dry wines. Source: Weinquiz after the WSET tasting grid.

Everywhere or only at home

How much there is of each grape, a last chart shows, from the University of Adelaide’s database compiled by the economist Kym Anderson with Signe Nelgen and Germán Puga. The most planted is Cabernet Sauvignon, with 279,000 hectares in 46 countries, the most widespread Chardonnay, in 47. Tempranillo has almost as much land, 227,000 hectares, but in only 20 countries, most of it in Spain. Thirteen of the 65 grow in a single country: five Turkish grapes and eight Swiss, the smallest Completer with 11 hectares. For the glass, the maps give one rule: if you like a wine, try its neighbour; every grape page shows its three closest on the map of its colour.

• The five most planted red grapes
• The five most planted white grapes
• Other grapes

Bearing area around 2023; Turkey has reported nothing since 2016. A country counts with at least one hectare of the grape; Airén and Macabeo, two large white grapes, have no page here yet. Source: Anderson, Nelgen and Puga, University of Adelaide (2026).