GARNACHA TINTA / GRENACHE NOIR

Writers often assign personalities to grapes and to the wines made from them. Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, is said to be high-toned and austere (Rex Harrison); Merlot, plump and approachable (Dolly Parton). These are metaphors, but they work.

Its character
Garnacha (or Grenache as it is known in France, its second home after Spain) is precocious, lush, heady, even a bit in-your-face (Forever Amber). Grenache, it seems, exists for one reason alone: to give its drinkers buckets of sensory pleasure.

It certainly gives them headaches. Few grapes produce wines of such alcoholic strength (15-16 percent isn’t unusual), its main calling card in red wine blends for years. It is the world’s most widely planted red grape variety—almost all of it in Spain—in large part because of this very ready ability to ripen into something stout. (Southern France turns out a lot of fortified sweet wine made of Grenache.)

Garnacha isn’t an age-worthy wine, and so winemakers pair it up with other grapes—Tempranillo in Spain; Mourvèdre and Syrah in the southern Rhône—that give it backbone, but in the same measure that it gives them pizzazz.

Grenache is one of the hardier vines around. France’s mistral doesn’t budge it. Australians plant it where nothing else will grow. It loves poorly drained, meager, hot and dry soils (in Châteauneuf, it is blanketed meter-deep in galets roulés, the Rhône’s famous round, heat-retaining stones).

Because it oxidizes easily—and because it has a singular voice—new oak barrels tend to blur Garnacha’s juicy purity. If at all, it spends time softening up a bit in large, older wood before bottling.

Spain
Garnacha Tinta was borne in Spain, probably in Aragon or Cataluña, and Spain remains its principal home. In Priorat, it makes fabulously rich, inky, high-alcohol, blackberry-tasting reds that have vaulted to a worldwide cachet.

In the Rioja, plantings are diminishing, but Garnacha still plays a role especially in Rioja Baja. North of Rioja, Navarra’s pink wines (rosados), all based in Garnacha, remain some of the best in the world: juicy, delicate, dry, full of youth.

Elsewhere—and ubiquitously—in Spain, Garnacha is the basis for even more rosado, and young fresh, everyday reds, and rivers of above-average red table wine with a touch of age, all serviceable in this, the world’s third largest wine-producing (and ninth-largest wine consuming) country.

France
Grenache Noir’s traditional starring role in France is in Châteauneuf-du-Pape where it forms the bulk of most blends (with Mourvèdre for spine and tannin, and Syrah for perfume and structure).

But moreover, in the continuously improving wines from villages such as Gigondas and Vacqueyras (where it can be up to 80% of the blend), Grenache makes a name for itself as a heady, brash, terrifically flavorful, chewy and sturdy red. Tavel’s famed dry rosés are chiefly (or all) Grenache and delicious for it.

And what zesty flavor you find in many a Côtes du Rhône and Côtes du Rhône Villages well may come from Grenache.

Australia, the USA and elsewhere
When the letters GSM appear on a label of Australian red wine, they stand for the increasingly popular blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre—a trio only slightly less enticing than sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Because Grenache is weak in backbone, the other two shore it up admirably and deliciously.

Plantings of Grenache in the United States are scattered, with the majority assigned to making inexpensive red wines, and only some others allocated to finer wine. This is changing as more producers realize the potential of low-yield, tenderly managed Grenache.

Sardinia calls Garnacha the Cannonau and makes from it some deliciously earthy, darkly pigmented reds.

Eating with Garnacha/Grenache
Flavors and aromas of good red Grenache may include ripe strawberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, blackberries, dark cherries, black pepper, spices, coffee, fresh gingerbread, even tar or leather. Grenache rosé (or rosado) is as pure a taste of fresh strawberries that a pink wine can achieve.

The many styles and weights of Garnacha make it a good accompaniment for a range of foods, from barbecued meats with younger versions, to roast lamb and beef with stouter wines.

Some Grenache can take a chill, especially for outdoor or picnic eats, and pink Garnacha goes with most anything - especially itself.