Editing Varietal (section)

{{Short description|Wine made primarily from a single named grape variety}}
{{about|a type of wine|the horticultural term|cultivar}}
[[File:Cuvee.jpg|thumb|A varietal Californian wine, a [[Zinfandel]].]]

A '''varietal wine''' is a [[wine]] made primarily from a single named [[grape]] [[Variety (biology)|variety]], and which typically displays the name of that variety on the [[wine label]].<ref>The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000.</ref><ref name=OCW-varietal>winepros.com.au. {{Cite web|last= Oxford Companion to Wine|title= varietal|url= http://www.winepros.com.au/jsp/cda/reference/oxford_entry.jsp?entry_id=3370|access-date= 2008-08-05|archive-date= 2008-07-26|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080726114411/http://www.winepros.com.au/jsp/cda/reference/oxford_entry.jsp?entry_id=3370|url-status= dead}}</ref> Examples of grape varieties commonly used in varietal wines are [[Cabernet Sauvignon]], [[Chardonnay]] and [[Merlot]]. Wines that display the name of two or more varieties on their label, such as a Chardonnay-[[Viognier]], are ''blends'' and not varietal wines. The term is frequently misused in place of [[vine]] variety; the term ''variety'' refers to the vine or grape, while ''varietal'' refers to the wine produced by a variety.<ref name=OCW-varietal/>

The term was popularized in the US by Maynard Amerine at the [[University of California, Davis]] after [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]] seeking to encourage growers to choose optimal vine varieties, and later promoted by [[Frank Schoonmaker]] in the 1950s and 1960s, ultimately becoming widespread during the California wine boom of the 1970s.<ref name=OCW-varietal/> Varietal wines are commonly associated with [[New World wine]]s in general, but there is also a long-standing tradition of varietal labelling in [[German wine|Germany]] and other German-influenced wine regions including [[Austrian wine|Austria]], [[Alsace wine|Alsace]], and the [[Czech wine|Czech Republic]].