Minisode #12: What Are the Noble Grapes? (And Why Should You Care?)

Show Notes

Minisode #12: What Are the Noble Grapes? (And Why Should You Care?)

Hi everyone, and welcome to this special mini-episode of The Wine Pair Podcast! I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair.

If you are new to The Wine Pair Podcast, these minisodes are just shorter versions of the regular podcast, and we do these on weeks where we might be traveling or handling other life stuff, and instead of tasting and reviewing three wines under $20 that are easy to find, which is what we usually do in our longer episodes, in these minisodes, we focus more on things like wine etiquette, wine education, and wine tips. And, we try to make it fun and lighthearted and entertaining and education for people who love wine and want to learn more about wine! And our podcast is recommended by Decanter magazine. Which is pretty fun.

Welcome to this latest minisode, which is a good indication that we are actually on some sort of trip, probably to see our kids, and didn’t have time to do a regular episode but, because I am obsessed with creating content every week, we are sharing this minisode with you. Because I am crazy, right Carmela?!?

I will, one of these days, just have to be ok with not having an episode every once in a while. Or re-releasing an old episode that I think people may have forgotten about. But, that’s for another time!

This week, we are going to talk about what exactly the Noble Grapes are, and why we should care, or not care for that matter! First, I will say that there is no set number of Noble Grapes. I have seen articles that call for anywhere between 4 and 18 Noble Grapes if you believe the folks at Wine Folly, and I have links to some of those articles in our show notes, but for the sake of this minisode, I am going to go with the traditional answer, and what most of the co-called experts would say, and focus on 7 Noble Grapes.

Now, some of the articles identify the Noble Grapes as being from specific regions, but I think that is too granular, so we are going to focus on the wine grapes that have impacted the wine world the most. 

Most of the articles that identify 6-7 Noble Grapes separate them into 3 white and 4 red, and six of the grapes are from France, and one is from Germany but is now famously grown in a French wine region called Alsace.

Any guesses on what the 7 Noble Grapes are, Carmela? The 7 Noble Grapes are generally defined as follows:

• White
  • Chardonnay
  • Sauvignon Blanc
  • Riesling
• Red
  • Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Merlot
  • Pinot Noir
  • Syrah

Now, your first question may be why are these considered to be the Noble Grapes? (And your second may be why is this list so dominated by French wines and not Italian, Spanish, or from some of the major wine growing region?)

The reason most people feel these wines are the Noble Grapes, according to Wine Enthusiast, is because 1) they are grown in virtually every wine growing region in the world, 2) they mostly grow relatively easily in a variety of climates, and 3) they do a good job of expressing where they are from, what we call terroir, which is a fancy way of saying place, which includes things climate, soil, water, elevation, and other things that make a specific piece of land unique. The exception on the easy to grow piece is that Pinot Noir is a notoriously finicky grape (just ask Paul Giamatti in the movie Sideways) and Riesling is also pretty sensitive to climate. 

Sometimes these are also considered to be the Noble Grapes because they produce consistently high quality wines when made well. 

I will give one other reason why these wines are considered noble as well, and that is because these wines were often favored by the “noble class” meaning nobility in places like France and England, which gave them a lot of cache globally, especially among the elites. 

Now, just because a wine is made from a Noble Grape does not mean that it is going to be a great wine. We will be the first ones to say that Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay in particular are over-produced and frequently made into aggressive, overly extracted, punch-you-in-the-face flavor bombs that are more like cocktails than fine wines.  

We will also say that it is highly likely that the first wines you drank, and maybe even all of the wines you drink, come from one or more of these 7 grapes. In fact, many of the great wine blends in the world are made from one or more of these Noble Grapes. And even today, we bet you are most familiar with one or more of these grapes and the wines made from them.

We would also say that you should be familiar with all of these grapes at a minimum, and I would suggest that you seek out French versions of wines made from these grapes so that you can understand better their origins. 

But if you are stuck on these grapes, we would also strongly suggest you branch out a little. While I respect the Noble Grapes, and even love some of them like Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, they are just a few among many, many, many wonderful grapes that we hope you are learning about in our podcast, because we cover lots and lots of them! And we do have a blog post on our website where we give you a little bit of a guide that let’s you see other wines you might like based on similarities. 

There is a great article from the New York Times that we have a link to in our show notes called “It’s Time to Put the Noble Grapes in Their Place” and the article talks about how there are fantastic, expensive, and desirable wines made from lots of different grapes. Take Barolo and Barbaresco which are made from the Nebbiolo grape, often called the Noble grape from Italy, or Taurasi from the Aglianico grape, or Brunello di Montalcino from the Sangiovese grape, or Rioja from the Tempranillo grape, or Priorat from Grenache, or  Gamay, Cabernet Franc, Zinfandel AKA Primitivo, Grüner Veltliner, Gewürztraminer, and Chenin Blanc, just to name a few off of the top of my head. 

We would say that you should know these Noble Grapes well and appreciate them, because they are often the jumping off point for appreciating wine, and are often the wines that others are easily compared to, but there are so many other wines that you can then try from there once you get a sense of how you feel about these wines. 

If you want to see the sources for our content today and get the links to learn more, come to our website, look for this minisode, and open up the show notes. 


Articles and Links

• https://www.wineenthusiast.com/basics/drinks-terms-defined/noble-grapes-wine-definition/
• https://winefolly.com/lifestyle/the-18-noble-grapes-wine-challenge/
• https://shop.kermitlynch.com/product/detail/SAMPNOBLE/#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%9CNoble%E2%80%9D%20c%C3%A9pages%20Muscat%2C,edge%20of%20the%20Vosges%20mountains.
• https://themillkeeper.com/7-noble-grapes-of-california-and-why-they-are-important/ 
• https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/the-6-noble-grapes/ 
• https://arrowheadwine.blogspot.com/2012/05/noble-grapes.html 
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/dining/drinks/wine-grapes.html

You can also check out our other minisodes and our regular sized episodes which you can find on our website thewinepairpodcast.com or your favorite podcast service. You can follow us on Instagram at thewinepairpodcast and in any of those places you can reach out to us directly, and you can send us an email at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com - and tell us other wines or topics on wine you want us to cover. We also will have our show notes on our website, and we will include links to articles on this topic as well. And, on our website you can also sign up for our fun newsletter!

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