Indigenous Varieties

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

indigenous varieties, vine varieties that are intensely local to a particular area and have a relatively long tradition of being grown there. Researchers in switzerland and gascony were some of the first to rescue near-extinct local varieties in the 1980s but they have been followed by a host of others in the early 21st century, particularly but not exclusively in Italy. A discernible fashion for indigenous varieties emerged as a reaction to an earlier one for international varieties.