Friulano Grenache Pinot Gris White Blend Hungary Tokaj

The Grenache grape holds the honor of being the most widely planted wine grape varietal on earth. It has a long and impressive history, and has been the backbone of the some of the planet’s most respected and famed wine regions, blended with Syrah in regions such as Chateauneuf du Pape, and in certain other Loire and Languedoc regions where it reigns supreme as a single varietal wine grape. In other key areas, such as Spain’s La Rioja (where it is known as Garnacha Tinta), it is blended with Tempranillo to make that country’s signature red wine, and is widely used as a blending grape in other old and new world countries, due to its unique character and jammy, fruit forward character.


For a long time, the Grenache grape was somewhat looked down upon as an ignoble varietal, incapable of producing wines of any particular interest. However, times are very much changing - in the right hands, Grenache grapes result in astonishingly intense and complex wines, full of fascinating features, and capable of achieving plenty of expression. For a while now, Grenache has been a major player in Australian wines. While not yet quite as extensively planted down under as Shiraz is, the Barossa Valley is bringing out some of the finest examples of this grape’s wines in recent years.

The Pinot Grigio or Pinot Gris grape varietal is now one of the most widely grown vines in the world, due to the surge in popularity of Pinot Grigio wines over the past twenty years or so. These grayish-blue fruits, which hang in their distinctively conical bunches, are responsible for a very broad range of wines famous for their variety of color tones and flavors Pinot Grigio varietal grapes are highly influenced by terroir, climate and particularly the skill and expertise of the vintners who process them. As such, there are full bodied, amber colored wines made from this grape, and there are equally delicious yet far leaner, paler, lighter bodied and crisp white wines made from the same species in other parts of the world.

Hungary was once considered one of the world's leading wine countries, with their distinctive and flavorful wines being the favorites of Europe's royal families until the early 20th century and the fall of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Soviet Union all but obliterated Hungary's wine traditions, replacing their unique produce with the sweet and characterless red wines the country is still often associated with, yet thankfully, the past twenty five years has seen an impressive return to form. All over the historic Tokaj region, craftsmen and master vintners are using the grape varietals which thrive on the hillsides in the hot summers and long autumns to once again produce the amazingly flavored Tokaji wines – a wine made by allowing the grapes to wither on the vine, thus concentrating the sugars and producing remarkable flavors and aromas of marzipan, dried fruits, pear and candied peel.