While some of France and Italy’s greatest wine regions—especially around the Mediterranean coast—specialize in blends, many, more inland and with more continental climates, have flourished in wines that contain just a single grape variety. For countless reasons—historical, cultural, geological—these regions have gravitated toward varietal wines, and generations of growers have continued to refine and perfect the marriage of grape variety and terroir.
       Take the Savary family’s Chablis. As in all of that appellation’s greatest bottles, Chardonnay serves as a lens through which to transmit the magic of Chablis’s Kimmeridgian terroirs. Through this lone grape, you can sense this limestone’s trademark crisp and mineral profile as well as Chablis’s quintessential orchard fruit and briny oyster-shell flavors with a remarkable purity. This goes also for Kuentz-Bas’s old-vine Riesling and Champalou’s Vouvray Brut. In these bottlings, the taut and vibrant Riesling and racy, mineral, stone-fruited Chenin Blanc deliver specific and unmistakable expressions of Alsace and Vouvray, respectively.
       You’ll find the same qualities in the regions of France and Italy where red grapes are most often bottled on their own, as in the Beaujolais, Piedmont, or Tuscany. The Thévenets’ old-vine Morgon showcases a gorgeous union of grape—Gamay—and sandy, granitic terroir, while Castagnoli’s Chianti Classico delivers Tuscan Sangiovese in all of its elegant, unadorned, and soulful glory. Finally, Tintero’s Barbaresco expresses an identity so alluringly pure and clear that Nebbiolo from this part of Piemonte might just become one of your favorite reds forever. This is the magic of single-variety wines.