As mentioned in “To blend or not to blend“, although many European winemakers have started putting the grape varieties used to make their wines on many of their entry-level bottlings, most wine labels won’t refer to those grape varieties once you get past entry-level. Instead, you will have to rely on the region that the wine came from to derive what grape variety or varieties were used. So the overview below provides an idea of what main grape varieties you can expect for some of the major European wine regions.

Note that this overview only includes some of Europe’s main wine regions and that it only shows the main grape varieties for each region. For example, Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Carménère are also allowed in red Bordeaux, but for simplicity’s sake the overview is showing the more common grape varieties only.