'The set of possibilities grouped under "Chenin" can dazzle'

Familiar friends, landmarks in the wine world, gateways to pleasure: that’s how we think of grape varieties. Varietal thinking is treacherous... but it seems to be conceptually necessary for us.How else can we keep the worrisome chaos of the wine world at bay?

- ANDREW JEFFORD

Once we start tasting, those familiar friends begin to swap clothes and identities, those landmarks turn up in the wrong places and those gateways open on strange, unexpected vistas. We taste, we drink, we relish. And then we ignore what we've just experienced. We go running back to our myths of varietal primacy and segregation - just so that we can keep our heads well organised.

All of this kept tickling me a little earlier this year during the Chenin Blanc International Celebration, held in early July in Angers and Tours, France. There was data aplenty. Fair enough: Chenin Blanc has a genetic definition, so its presence in the world's winelands can be measured. South Africa has just over half of the world's plantings (16,200ha in 2023) and France a little more than one third (10,700ha in 2023); the US, Argentina and Australia share the rest. It's South Africa's most planted variety; in France, by contrast, it's the 14th most planted, the fifth most planted white and the third most important variety in the Loire.