Popular grapes & styles
Where you'll find it: Worldwide, but particularly New Zealand (Marlborough) and France (Loire and Bordeaux)
Flavours: Citrus, gooseberry, herbaceous/grassy
Style: Refreshingly crisp and exuberantly aromatic
Food: Goat's cheese and asparagus
Drink it here: With punchy canapés at a trendy party
View our sauvignon blanc wines
Where you'll find it: Germany, Alsace, Australia
Flavours: Lime, mineral and floral
Style: Delicate, racy, complex and fine.
Food: Dim sum, oysters, rich pork dishes
Drink it here: An elegant dinner with your fellow wine-geek friends
View our riesling wines
Where you'll find it: Alsace and Chile
Flavours: Rose, lychee and spice
Style: Fragrant, floral, higher-alcohol and lower acidity
Food: Fragrant Asian cuisine and soft cheeses
Drink it here: With a fancy cheeseboard or curled up with an Indian or Chinese takeaway
View our gewurztraminer wines
Where you'll find it: Rhône & South of France, new world (particularly Australia and USA)
Flavours: Apricot, peach and floral
Style: Sensuous, heady fruit, perfumed and rich
Food: Fruity chicken tagine, scallops
Drink it here: In a summer garden with good company
View our viognier wines
Where you'll find it: France (Alsace, south of France), Mediterranean countries
Flavours: Grape, floral and grapefruit
Style: Distinctively grapy and delicate, capable of bone-dry to lusciously sweet wine
Food: Gazpacho or olives (dry), fruit salad (sweet)
Drink it here: With a starter or nibbles in the sunshine
View our muscat wines
Where you'll find it: Alsace and New Zealand
Flavours: spice, bread and honey
Style: Refreshing, creamy and sometimes unctuously textured
Food: Fresh vegetable dishes, ceviche, prawn and chilli pasta
Drink it here: Weekend dinners, or when trying to show friends what pinot grigio is really capable of!
View our pinot gris wines
Falanghina: Fresh, tangy and often floral southern Italian grape variety. Beautiful with fragrant fish dishes
Torrontés: A floral, sweet-smelling Argentine speciality with similar style to muscat and gewürztraminer
Bacchus: One of the UK's best and most widely planted white grapes, similar in style to New Zealand sauvignon blanc
What makes a wine aromatic?
Grapes and winemaking
Aromatic wine is made from aromatic grapes! It's in their genes. This can be enhanced by winemaking decisions such as fermenting at cooler temperatures to keep the aromas fresh.
More often than not, aromatic wines won't be oak-aged to let the fragrant fruit shine through – but there are certainly exceptions to this unofficial rule.
Food Matching
Soft Cheese
Powerful cheeses need wines full of character so their assertive flavours can match the cheese and cut through the creaminess.
Asian Food
The extra sugar in the likes of gewürztraminer and pinot gris offset the spice (think about why sweet chilli sauce works so well), and these grapes often possess a little spice themselves to complement fragrant flavours.
Creamy Curry
The weighty texture of the likes of viognier and pinot gris can match the similar creaminess of rich dishes, and their fragrant fruitiness cuts through just like the fruit so often found in a tagine or creamy curry.
