Why we’re all boldly going where no drinker has gone before

Set the controls for another world We’re boldly seeking out more unusual grapes and unfamiliar regions than ever

Fancy a glass of feteasca regala or ribolla gialla? Until recently, the response of most drinkers might well have been a diffident “Not really” or even a robust “You what?” – the spirit of adventure being somewhat lacking in the thirsty majority. That’s assuming some more familiar option was on offer, of course.

It’s not an unreasonable position to take. Much of our pleasure in food and drink comes from the tantalising excitement of anticipation, the relish and satisfaction of playing over our prospective first sip in the imagination and then the pleasant un-surprise of taking it in reality. Many who might be open to discovering fresh flavours are put off by the faff of the new: how do you know what to pick if you’ve never heard of a grape, and can barely pronounce its name when you do encounter it?

Yet something has happened over the last year. Incarcerated in our homes and trapped in a diminished version of our routines, people have become active seekers after whatever slender options remain for breaking the uniformity. Laithwaite’s says the year of lockdowns has driven interest in “unusual wines”, with huge increases in sales of bottles from Hungary (up 240 per cent), Bulgaria (up 160 per cent) and Moldova (up 85 per cent), while at one point “bottles from Bolivia and Uruguay completely sold out”.

Into this receptive environment, M&S has just launched its new Found range: a collection of 12 wines made from either unusual grapes or grapes growing in places we might not expect to see them.

“At M&S we’ve always championed interesting and unusual grapes,” says buyer Sue Daniels. “But we found [that when we stocked unusual wines] they’d do well for a short period then fall off the radar, almost as if customers couldn’t find them. It wasn’t that they didn’t resonate, they didn’t have the longevity.”

So came the idea to gather together a portfolio with a strong visual identity, to bring coherence and findability to the wines, making them feel a bit less like outliers.

For anyone wanting to explore different grapes, there are plenty to go at. Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and José Vouillamoz profile 1,368 varieties in their weighty book Wine Grapes. In the preface, Robinson notes that “the total number of different vine varieties is about 10,000, members of half a dozen species.” Presumably, not all of these are made into wine. Even so, the numbers give an idea that there’s a galaxy of possibility beyond malbec, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay.

Daniels says that to put together the new M&S Found range: “We raided our archives of wines we’d sold in the past and looked at the portfolios of producers we’d previously worked with.” They came up with a list of 2,000 different wines, which were whittled down to the dozen just launched. We wanted them to be accessible, in terms of both price and taste. So nothing too wild and wacky and they’re all in the £7 to £10 bracket.”

M&S Found is a remarkably polished and delicious range that takes in a cabernet franc from Argentina, país from Chile and gros manseng from Gascony in southern France. Particular favourites of mine include the juicy mazuelo (AKA cariñena, AKA carignan) from La Rioja in Spain, a red that tastes of figs and dried herbs and costs £8.50; the ribolla gialla (pronounced ri-bol-la jal-la), a beautifully savoury white from north-eastern Italy, which has notes of sage and citrus and costs £7; the blanquette de Limoux, a crisp sparkling wine from the French foothills of the Pyrenees that’s made from mauzac with a bit of chenin blanc and chardonnay, which tastes of green apples and apple blossom and costs £10; and the moschofilero and roditis from Greece, a white that tastes of lemon balm and rosewater and costs £8.50. I also love the Greek red in the range (see Wines of the Week).

There are excellent food recommendations for each wine; these come from the producers, though Sue Daniels says there was a bit of negotiating at times: “All the suggestions for the feteasca regala seemed to involve offal, which I like but thought not everyone else might.” That’s another lovely wine: a just off-dry white that tastes of pears, melon, star fruit and honeysuckle and costs £7.

You can buy the M&S Found wines as mixed cases of six (£50 for the reds; £49.50 for the whites). The M&S PR has already bought herself one of the reds, which is a great vote of confidence. And M&S is printing wine passports so you can tick off the ones you’ve tried and mark those you like.

The Wine Society also has an initiative to promote less well-known grapes. Its Bin Series was launched two years ago and consists of one-off limited-edition releases. The first was a very good bobal. The most recent, the eighth in the series, was a manseng noir released in February. The wines usually sell out very quickly.

Of course you can also find lesserknown grapes in plenty of other places, too. Asda and Aldi both have feteasca regala on the shelves. If you’re looking to step away from the superhighway of international varieties and on to the side-roads of grapes that have remained more local, here is a handful to look out for.

Bobal is one of Spain’s most planted red varieties, but little seen beyond the Iberian Peninsula; it makes robust wines with a lick of astringency and faint notes of cocoa. Frappato is a Sicilian red that tastes of pomegranate. Malagousia is a Greek white grape whose wines have an exotic perfume of peach and jasmine. Furmint is a white grape grown in Hungary, where it is used to make that famous nectar of a sweet wine tokaji, but it also makes good dry whites.

And last but by no means least – even if it’s perhaps less of a newcomer to our shopping baskets – touriga nacional is a red found in Portugal’s Douro Valley, where it is used to make both port and intense, slightly wild but very structured reds.

Many who might be open to fresh flavours are put off by the faff of the new