Cinsaut

Cinsaut is a southern French grape, heat and drought tolerant, that gives a pale, light, soft red with strawberry and a floral lift, low tannin and moderate acidity. It was long treated as a bulk grape and a blending component, and it is one of the classic partners for grenache, syrah and carignan in Languedoc and southern Rhône blends.

Its most important role is genetic. In 1925 Abraham Perold at Stellenbosch University crossed cinsaut with pinot noir and produced pinotage, South Africa's own variety. Cinsaut was known in South Africa as hermitage at the time, which is where the second half of the name comes from.

It is also one of the best rosé grapes in the world, because its pale colour and delicate red fruit are exactly what the Provence style wants. And it is now at the centre of a small revival: old dry-farmed cinsaut bush vines in South Africa's Darling and Swartland, in Chile's Itata and in the Languedoc are being made into light, fresh, low-alcohol reds that suit the current taste far better than the heavy wines that displaced them.