Grenache Noir

Identity

Grenache Noir is the great grape of the French Midi: France's second most planted red variety, it dominates the southern Rhône, Languedoc-Roussillon and much of Provence. It is a grape built for sun, almost the physiological opposite of Pinot Noir on paper: a thin skin, modest anthocyanin content, some of the lowest acidity of any red variety, yet an alcohol level among the highest.

Vinified alone it gives broad, warm, lightly coloured reds, alongside powerful rosés and vins doux naturels. But it is above all in blends, alongside Syrah and Mourvèdre — which supply the colour and backbone it lacks — that it does what it does best: alcohol, roundness and an inimitable confected fruit.

History and origin

Grenache's international reference name, Garnacha Tinta, gives its origin away: the variety comes from Spain, most probably Aragon, and is thought to have entered France in the Middle Ages through the Roussillon, then part of the Crown of Aragon. Its later spread across the whole Mediterranean basin — Sardinia (where it is called Cannonau, the official name of the local appellation), mainland Italy, southern France — made it one of the most widely planted grapes on earth.

Its parentage, though, remains an unsolved puzzle: the VIVC assigns it no marker-confirmed parent. As with Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc elsewhere in this corpus, this entry declines to invent a genealogy the science has not established.

In the vineyard

Grenache buds at mid-season, five days after Chasselas — the same rhythm as Cabernet Franc — but it is at ripening that it really stands apart: four weeks after Chasselas, right at the end of the cycle, making it the latest-ripening grape in this corpus to date. That combination of early budbreak and late ripening demands long, hot summers to bring the fruit properly home.

Its vigour runs high, which, combined with a marked sensitivity to downy mildew and grey rot, calls for careful vine management. It also shows, in some vintages, a sensitivity to coulure at flowering. Its thin skin and low anthocyanin load leave it prone to oxidation besides, in tank as much as in bottle — a trait Roussillon winemakers have historically turned into a style, ageing their vins doux naturels under a veil or in a deliberately oxidative setting.

It favours poor, dry, stony ground — rolled pebbles, schist, sand — where its natural vigour is kept in check and the heat stored by the stones through the day radiates back at night, helping the fruit ripen fully.

In the glass

Pale colour for a red, almost translucent at the rim after only a few years. On the nose, strawberry and raspberry open the show, quickly joined by kirsch — somewhere between cherry and fruit brandy, a marker of ripe Grenache more pronounced than in the other red varieties of the southern Rhône. A peppery note follows: white pepper, not to be mistaken for Syrah's black pepper — a milder, less pungent spice. Garrigue — thyme, rosemary, cistus — is the archetypal southern register, explicitly named by the Gigondas AOC specifications to describe this grape.

In hot vintages and at low yields the fruit tips toward prune and dried fig, running to over-ripeness if picking is delayed. A touch of liquorice rounds things off.

On the palate, acidity is the lowest in this corpus — 1 to 2 — and the supple, sparse tannins rarely exceed 2: Grenache has neither for a backbone, but a broad body (3 to 5) and high alcohol (4 to 5) carry the wine on their own. With age, undergrowth and leather set in, and a touch of managed oxidation, far from a fault, becomes the signature of the great old-vine wines of the Midi.

Great terroirs

Grenache is the pivotal grape of the southern Rhône — a region with no entry of its own yet in this corpus, though its role is documented here through its appellation rules. At Châteauneuf-du-Pape, it is one of eighteen authorised varieties (a count that lists each colour of Grenache, Clairette and Picpoul separately, which is why it differs from the "thirteen varieties" traditionally quoted), on the famous rolled pebbles that radiate heat back at night. At Gigondas, the rules speak explicitly of "particular expressions of altitude Grenache, paired with Syrah and Mourvèdre," on the limestone of the Dentelles de Montmirail.

In Languedoc-Roussillon it is the grape of the vins doux naturels of Banyuls and Maury, aged in foudre or demijohn under the sun, as well as a great deal of everyday southern red.

Beyond France, Spain (Priorat, Rioja under the name Garnacha), Sardinia (Cannonau) and Australia (McLaren Vale, the Barossa) all make powerful versions, often from very old vines.

Commonly confused with

Syrah, with which it is almost always blended, stands apart through a far denser colour, higher acidity and, above all, black pepper that is sharper than Grenache's white pepper.

Mourvèdre, the third pillar of southern blends, is darker, more tannic and more reductive; Grenache, by contrast, is the grape of roundness and fruit, never of firmness.

Pinot Noir, sharing a similarly pale colour, can mislead at first glance: but its acidity is far livelier, its alcohol more modest, and it has neither Grenache's white pepper nor its garrigue.