Muscat Blanc

Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains is the finest member of a large and ancient family, and one of the oldest identifiable wine grapes in cultivation — it is almost certainly the Anathelicon moschaton described by Greek writers and the Apiana of the Romans, named for the bees it attracted.

It is distinguished by one property shared by almost no other wine grape: the wine smells like the fresh fruit. Most varieties develop aromas during fermentation that the grape itself does not have. Muscat's terpenes are present in the berry, and a good Muscat is recognisably grapey in a way that is charming rather than crude.

The small berries — petits grains — give a higher skin-to-juice ratio and more concentrated aromatics than the coarser Muscat of Alexandria. The aroma runs to orange blossom, elderflower, peach, apricot and a distinct musky note.

It appears in an unusual range of wines. Dry and light in Alsace and Austria; barely alcoholic and gently fizzy as Moscato d'Asti in Piedmont; fortified as vin doux naturel in the southern Rhône and Roussillon; sun-dried and sweet across Greece, where Samos is the reference; and dark, raisined and extraordinary as Rutherglen Muscat in Australia.

A red-berried mutation, Muscat à Petits Grains Rouges, exists and is the grape of Rutherglen.

It is also one of the most prolific parents in the grape world, appearing in the ancestry of a long list of varieties across the Mediterranean.

The Muscat family is large and confusing, and the distinction that matters is between this variety and Muscat of Alexandria. Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains has smaller berries, a higher skin-to-juice ratio and a finer, more floral perfume; Muscat of Alexandria is coarser and more overtly grapey, and much of it is grown for raisins and table grapes.

Its terpenes are present in the fruit rather than created during fermentation, which is why every style made from it — dry, fizzy, fortified, sun-dried — carries the same recognisable perfume. That consistency is unusual and is the reason a blind taster can identify Muscat more reliably than almost any other grape.

It is also one of the oldest cultivated varieties in the Mediterranean, with a plausible documentary trail back to classical Greece and Rome, and it has parented an unusual number of the region's other grapes, including Torrontés in Argentina by way of the Spanish colonial vineyards.