The rise and rise of varietal wine

By Jamie Goode | 20th November 2025

It wasn’t all that long ago that if you wanted to order a wine, you’d need to know quite a bit about the names of the different wine regions. The labelling of wine by grape variety, which is the norm now in many regions, wasn’t really a thing in the past.

It was in the 1960s and 1970s that wineries realized that using the grape variety name on the label was a smart way of letting the customer know what sort of wine they were buying.

The classic European regions, with the notable exceptions of Alsace and Germany, have always put place names on the label. We have red Burgundy with its numerous place names (all Pinot Noir), white Burgundy (mostly Chardonnay, once more with many place names), Chablis (Chardonnay), Beaujolais (Gamay), red Northern Rhône (Syrah, again, with a lot of different place names), and so on. In Italy, we have Chianti Classico not Sangiovese on the label; and Barolo not Nebbiolo on the label. I could go on. The point is, that to navigate a wine list full of classic names you need quite a bit of knowledge. You could end up ordering Pouilly-Fuissé (Chardonnay from Burgundy) instead of Pouilly-Fumé (Sauvignon from the Loire) without it.

So when Australia and California began making wine, they frequently borrowed European names to describe their wines. Claret, Burgundy, Sauternes, Hock, Port, Sherry and Moselle might appear on the labels, as well as Champagne for anything sparkling. These names would be used to indicate the style of the wine and didn’t correspond to the grape varieties used.

Before the 1960s hardly any wines were labelled by variety in California, but as the decade progressed, a bunch of wineries started using these names. Robert Mondavi, in particular, is credited with leading this charge, spotting this as a way to make wines a lot more accessible to consumers. Instead of learning a bunch of place names, people simply had to get the hang of how a bunch of varieties tasted. Others who joined this varietal movement include Beaulieu, Charles Krug, Wente, Louis Martini, Inglenook Vineyards, Stony Hill and Martin Ray. But it’s interesting to note that until 1983 you only needed 51% of a grape variety in the blend to label the wine solely as made from that variety. And even now in California, a Pinot Noir, Chardonnay or any other varietally labelled wine need only have 75% of that variety for it to be considered a single-variety wine for labelling purposes.

Things progressed in the 1970s. In Australia, table wines began to overtake fortifieds, and the first Chardonnays began to hit the market. In New Zealand, the first Sauvignon Blanc was planted in Marlborough in 1975. In South Africa, the first switch from a market dominated by the KWV and Stellenbosch Farmers Winery to one where individual wine estates made and sold wine began in the 1980s. This meant that more wines began to hit the market with the names of varieties on the labels.

This is where we must pause for a slightly pedantic point to be made. If a wine is made from a single variety, then it is a varietal wine. But Chardonnay, for example, is not a varietal, it is a variety. People often confuse the two terms.

We now have a very interesting situation in the wine world. Sometimes the region of origin of a variety is outpaced and overtaken by a region that has adopted this variety. Consider South Africa’s most important white grape variety, Chenin Blanc. You could say that South African Chenin is now the defining example of Chenin. There’s more of it in South Africa than there is in its region of origin, France’s Loire Valley (with 19 000 hectares South Africa has almost twice as much), and you’ll rarely see Chenin on the label of a Loire wine. Instead, we have Vouvray, or Savennières, or Saumur Blanc, and so on.

Then for Sauvignon, New Zealand now leads the way. New Zealand’s Marlborough region has the most of any region globally, with 20 000 hectares. The Loire, its ancestral home, makes quite a bit, and rarely has Sauvignon on the label, and the New Zealand style has defined the variety globally.

Interestingly, South Africa didn’t use the name Chenin Blanc to describe this variety. It was called Steen, and no one knew what it was until 1963, when Professor CJ Orffer finally proved it was the same as Chenin.

The use of the variety name to sell wine is so powerful now, that if you go into a pub, you are just as likely to ask for a Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, or Pinot Grigio as you are to ask for a dry white wine. Pubs will usually offer these three examples, and the variety indicates clearly the style of wine you are going to get.

But what about blends? Many of the world’s most successful wines are blends, but it’s then a little harder to sell them: how do customers know what to ask for, or what they are getting? It’s interesting that red and white Bordeaux are blends of grape varieties, while red and white Burgundy are always single-variety wines. But there are some regions specializing in blends that are so famous that people don’t really need the buying cue of variety: think of Rioja or Champagne as examples.

In South Africa, most wines are single-variety. We have Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay for whites. Then for reds, it’s Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz (or Syrah), Pinotage, Pinot Noir and Merlot. Where we encounter blends is most commonly with Bordeaux-style reds. But there is something to be said for blends: if you have a range of different undisclosed varieties in a wine, it gives the winegrower flexibility to switch the proportions of the varieties depending on the season, and also to switch in climate-resistant varieties for the future, increasing resilience. The challenge for those making blends is being able to communicate with customers to let them know what they are getting in the bottle.