The wine industry has spent the past several decades chasing fashion. International varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Merlot…colonized vineyards from California to Chile to Australia, creating a global monoculture where wines tasted increasingly similar regardless of where they were grown. Terroir, that much-discussed concept, became less important than brand recognition and critic scores.

But something curious has happened in the past few years. A countermovement has emerged, driven by a younger generation of winemakers and drinkers who find homogeneity dull. They’re excavating forgotten vineyards, reviving abandoned varieties, and making wines that taste like they come from somewhere specific rather than anywhere in general.

This isn’t nostalgia, exactly, though there’s some of that involved. It’s more practical than sentimental. Climate change has made the old playbook obsolete. Varieties that thrived in cooler decades now ripen too quickly, producing flabby wines with too much alcohol and not enough acid. Indigenous grapes, adapted over centuries to their specific environments, suddenly look less like curiosities and more like solutions.

Georgia’s Eight-Thousand-Year Head Start

Georgian wine has become the poster child for this rediscovery, which is ironic given that Georgia never stopped making wine the way it always had. The country claims an eight-thousand-year winemaking history, though “claim” isn’t quite right—archaeological evidence supports it. Wine was being made in clay vessels called qvevri while most of Europe was still figuring out agriculture.

The qvevri method involves fermenting white grapes with their skins, stems, and seeds in large egg-shaped clay vessels buried underground. The result is what the rest of the world calls orange wine, though Georgians prefer “amber,” which is more accurate. The wines have the tannin and structure of reds but the acidity of whites. They’re textured, grippy, complex, and nothing like Chardonnay.

For most of the twentieth century, this didn’t matter. Georgian wine existed in obscurity, trapped behind the Iron Curtain and largely unknown outside the Soviet sphere. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the wines that emerged were often oxidized, poorly made, and sold on nostalgia rather than quality.

The revival began in the 1990s when a handful of Western winemakers. Italians, mostly, from Friuli visited Georgia and recognized something valuable. They started importing qvevri to make their own skin-contact wines, creating a market and a conversation. By the 2010s, Georgian wines had found an audience among natural wine enthusiasts and sommeliers looking for something different to put on their lists.

The numbers tell the story. Georgian wine exports to the United States have increased more than threefold since 2012, though that still amounts to less than a million bottles annually. The wines remain a specialty offering, closely associated with the natural wine category and the attendant debates about whether “funky” is a virtue or a flaw.

But the international competition results from 2025 suggest Georgian wine has moved beyond niche status. Multiple gold medals for orange wines and age-worthy Saperavi reds indicate that judges are evaluating these wines on quality rather than novelty. The country isn’t just participating in a trend—it invented the style that’s now trending.

The grape varieties themselves remain obscure. Rkatsiteli, Mtsvane, Kisi, and Khikhvi for whites. Saperavi for reds. Most wine drinkers can’t pronounce them, much less identify them in a blind tasting. But that’s part of the appeal. These aren’t grapes you find everywhere else. They taste specifically Georgian, reflecting volcanic soils, continental climate, and centuries of viticultural selection.

The challenge for Georgian producers is the same challenge facing any wine region trying to build international recognition: consistency. The best Georgian wines are extraordinary. They are complex, layered, and capable of aging. The worst are experiments that should have stayed in the cellar. The range is wide, and unless you know the producers, buying Georgian wine is a gamble.

Sicily’s Second Act

Sicily has always made wine, but for most of the twentieth century it made the wrong kind. The island became Europe’s bulk wine supplier, producing vast quantities of indifferent red destined for blending or distillation. EU subsidies encouraged volume over quality, and Sicilian viticulture responded accordingly.

Nero d’Avola, the island’s flagship red variety, suffered from this arrangement. The grape has the structure and intensity to make serious wine—dark fruit, good acidity, firm tannins—but for decades it was overcropped and vinified carelessly. The wines were either thin and simple or alcoholic fruit bombs, neither particularly interesting.

The turnaround began in the 1990s when a few producers started treating Nero d’Avola like it deserved respect. Lower yields, better sites, attention to winemaking. The wines improved dramatically. By the 2000s, Nero d’Avola had shed its bulk-wine image and established itself as a premium variety capable of competing with Italy’s better-known reds.

What makes Nero d’Avola relevant now is its adaptability. The grape thrives in heat and can handle drought, which matters increasingly as Mediterranean summers get hotter and drier. Producers in historically warm regions are harvesting earlier to maintain acidity, but Nero d’Avola doesn’t require the same adjustments. It ripens reliably year after year without losing its structure.

The grape expresses terroir with unusual clarity. On limestone soils, it produces wines with elegance and finesse—red fruits, floral notes, surprising freshness. On clay or volcanic soils, it becomes more powerful and concentrated, with darker fruit and spice. The range is considerable, which gives winemakers options depending on what style they’re after.

Nero d’Avola also blends well, particularly with Frappato, another Sicilian native. The two varieties are the basis for Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Sicily’s only DOCG. Frappato contributes brightness, cherry fruit, and lift. Nero d’Avola provides structure and depth. The combination works in a way that Nero d’Avola blended with international varieties often doesn’t. There’s a logic to pairing grapes that evolved in the same place.

Frappato itself has become a sommelier favorite, riding the trend toward lighter, more elegant reds. The grape produces wines with translucent color, bright acidity, and red fruit that can be almost Burgundian in character. It’s being compared to Pinot Noir, which may be overselling it, but the point is valid. Frappato offers complexity without weight, which is what a lot of wine drinkers want right now.

The broader Sicilian wine scene has diversified considerably. Etna Rosso, made primarily from Nerello Mascalese, has gained international prominence for its elegance and sense of place. White varieties like Grillo and Catarratto are being taken seriously rather than relegated to Marsala production. The island now produces wines across the style spectrum, from delicate whites to powerful reds to everything in between.

Sicily’s advantage is its diversity of terroir. The island is large, with multiple microclimates, soil types, and elevations. There’s no single Sicilian style because there’s no single Sicilian environment. What unifies the best producers is a commitment to indigenous varieties and site-specific winemaking. The international grapes are still there, but they’re no longer the focus.

The Criolla Revolution

South America’s wine story has been told backwards. The narrative goes: Spanish colonists brought European vines, which evolved into local varieties, which were then abandoned in favor of French grapes in the late twentieth century, which is what we drink today. The end.

Except it’s not the end. The middle part—the centuries when South American wine was made from Criolla grapes—is being rewritten by a new generation of producers who’ve discovered that these varieties are worth preserving.

Criolla is a collective term for a complex family of grapes that originated from crosses between the varieties Spanish missionaries brought in the sixteenth century. The founding grapes were mostly Listán Prieto and Moscatel de Alejandría. These crossed with each other and with additional imports, creating dozens of distinct varieties adapted to local conditions from Mexico to Argentina.

For centuries, Criolla grapes dominated South American viticulture. In Chile, País (the local name for Listán Prieto) accounted for over 30,000 hectares as recently as 1985. In Argentina, Cereza reached 40,000 hectares in the 1980s. These were the wines ordinary people drank—light, fruity, unpretentious, consumed by the jug.

Then came modernization. Starting in the 1990s, South American wine producers focused on export markets, which meant planting varieties international buyers recognized. Malbec in Argentina. Carmenère in Chile. Cabernet Sauvignon everywhere. Criolla grapes were pulled out or abandoned, dismissed as peasant varieties unsuitable for quality wine.

The reversal started quietly in Chile around 2010. A handful of producers in Maule, Itata, and Bío Bío began working with old País vineyards, some with vines over two hundred years old. The wines they made were nothing like the bulk País of previous decades. They were elegant, complex, expressive of place. Sommeliers noticed. Importers noticed. Suddenly País was showing up on wine lists in Santiago and beyond.

What makes País interesting is its translucency. The wines are pale, almost Pinot-like in color, with delicate tannins and bright acidity. The fruit character is red cherry, strawberry, sometimes floral. The best examples have a purity and directness that more extracted wines lack. They’re the opposite of the high-alcohol, heavily oaked reds that dominated South American wine for decades.

Argentina’s Criolla revival has followed a similar path but started later. Criolla Chica—the Argentine name for Listán Prieto—wasn’t even recognized as a quality wine grape by the country’s National Viticulture Institute until 2024. Before that, producers couldn’t label it as such or include it in wines with geographic designations. The bureaucratic barrier kept serious producers from working with it.

Now that’s changed. Winemakers in San Juan, Mendoza, and Salta are making Criolla Chica wines from old, high-altitude vineyards. The wines show intensity and freshness, with the grape’s naturally high tannins providing structure despite the pale color. Early results suggest the variety has considerable potential, particularly from sites above 1,500 meters where the diurnal temperature swing preserves acidity.

The broader Criolla family includes more than sixty identified varieties in Argentina and eighty-six in Chile, with new discoveries happening regularly. Many of these grapes exist in tiny quantities, grown in forgotten vineyards by farmers who never pulled them out. Researchers are cataloging them, testing their viticultural characteristics, and determining which might be suitable for quality wine production.

The timing is fortuitous. Criolla grapes are adapted to South American conditions—drought-tolerant, resistant to heat and cold, capable of thriving in marginal soils. As climate change makes viticulture more challenging, these varieties offer a sustainable alternative to international grapes that require more water and intervention. The fact that they also make distinctive, terroir-expressive wines is a bonus.

The market for Criolla wines is still developing. In South America, they’re popular in trendy restaurants and natural wine bars, where their light, fresh character fits the current aesthetic. Export markets have been slower to embrace them, partly because the names are unfamiliar and partly because the wines don’t fit established categories. They’re not quite rosé, not quite light red, and they require explanation.

But that’s changing. The same consumers who seek out orange wine from Georgia and Frappato from Sicily are willing to try País from Chile or Criolla from Argentina. The appeal isn’t the grape itself—most people have never heard of it—but what it represents: authenticity, history, a connection to place.

The Pattern

What ties these wines together isn’t geography or style but philosophy. They’re reactions against the globalization of wine, the flattening of regional character, the dominance of a handful of varieties grown everywhere. They represent a return to specificity, to making wines that could only come from one place rather than wines engineered to taste the same everywhere.

This isn’t a rejection of international varieties outright. Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay aren’t going away. But their monopoly is breaking. Wine regions are rediscovering what they had before they decided to plant what everyone else was planting. In some cases, that means indigenous varieties. In others, it means old vines of obscure grapes that survived because someone forgot to pull them out.

Climate change has accelerated this process. Varieties selected over centuries for specific environments are better adapted to local conditions than varieties imported from somewhere else. Georgian grapes handle continental temperature swings. Sicilian varieties thrive in Mediterranean heat. Criolla grapes tolerate drought and altitude. These aren’t theoretical advantages—they’re practical solutions to real problems.

The challenge is market acceptance. Wine drinkers have been trained to recognize certain names: Merlot, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc. Asking them to learn Rkatsiteli or Frappato or Criolla Chica is asking a lot. Most won’t bother. But enough will, particularly younger drinkers who value diversity and authenticity over brand recognition.

The industry’s response has been mixed. Large producers continue focusing on varieties with established markets. Small producers experiment with obscure grapes, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The middle ground—producers large enough to have distribution but small enough to take risks—is where the interesting work is happening.

Whether this becomes a permanent shift or a passing trend depends on quality. If these wines are merely interesting—novelties that sommeliers champion but consumers don’t return to—the moment will pass. If they’re genuinely good, offering something that mainstream varieties can’t, they’ll find a lasting place in the market.

The early signs are promising. Competition results show judges taking these wines seriously. Export numbers, while still small, are growing. Restaurants and wine bars are dedicating list space to regional specialties rather than the usual suspects. The momentum is real, even if the scale remains modest.

What’s clear is that wine is becoming less monolithic. The assumption that quality means Bordeaux varieties or Burgundy grapes is fading. There’s room now for wines that don’t fit the old categories, that require explanation, that taste like they come from somewhere specific. Whether that somewhere is Georgia, Sicily, or the Andes doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it’s somewhere at all.

The wine world is rediscovering what it lost when it decided that a handful of varieties could satisfy every palate and suit every climate. The rediscovery is messy, uneven, and far from complete. But it’s happening, and it’s producing wines worth paying attention to, even if you can’t pronounce the grapes they’re made from.