After Spain's Airén, this is the most widely planted dark-skinned grape variety in the world, thanks to its popularity in Spain and southern France. In the late Middle Ages the house of Aragon apparently took it far and wide around the Mediterranean - although Sardinians (who call it Cannonau) argue that they stole it from them.

This archetypal hot climate vine, which has to be pruned very severely if it is not to produce too much bland wine, can produce slightly pale but quite alcoholic wine which can taste spicy and sweet. Like Cinsault, the grapes have relatively thin skins and musts tend to oxidise easily, but fine rosés can be made. Grenache is usually blended with other varieties higher in colour and tannin such as Syrah and Mourvèdre. In the Southern Rhône, it provides the backbone for most red blends and is the key component of Châteauneuf du Pape. It is an ingredient in most Languedoc-Roussillon AC wines and is responsible for much of the rosé wine from Southern France.

It is the most extensively grown grape in Spain where it is known as Garnacha Tinta. In Rioja, it is blended with Tempranillo and is most widely planted in the warm Eastern Rioja Baja region. The very best Garnacha wines come from Priorat in Catalonia, where fruit from old Garnacha bush vines is blended with small quantities of Cabernet Sauvignon to produce wines of startling intensity and depth of fruit.

Grenache was once Australia`s most widely planted black grape but most of the vines were planted in hot, heavily irrigated vineyards where yields were too high to produce interesting wine and most of them were dug up in the 1970s and early 1980s to make room for more fashionable grapes. However, dry-farmed, older bush-pruned vines are being sought out as the market clamours for more and more Rhône-like GSM (Grenache/Syrah/Mourvèdre blend) wines and plantings have been on the increase since the early 1990s. The best examples are found in the Barossa Valley.