Piquepoul, Grüner Veltliner, Cinsaut, Blaufränkisch—four contemporary varieties possibly spelling the future of California wine

Early morning Picpooul Blanc harvest, Acquiesce Vineyards, Mokelumne River-Lodi appellation. How is your contemporary wine grape IQ? Are you up on the latest "alternative" varietals? Should you even care? If a grape makes perfectly delicious wine, I would say "yes" to the last question. The way I see it: There are many grape varieties—hundreds of them, probably, grown all over the world—that may be new, unknown, exotic or even strange to most of us here in America. Yet in the parts of the world where these grapes come from, they are practically pedestrian, making perfectly familiar drinking wine. What may be strange here is usually an everyday thing elsewhere. Or vice versa. Take, in a reverse-case scenario, a grape everyone knows here in California: Zinfandel, which (despite the commercial dominance of grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay) is still the most widely planted grape in Lodi. Zinfandel, however, is not grown in Spain, France or Germany, three of the largest wine countries in Europe. And why should Spain, France or Germany care about Zinfandel? They have plenty of grapes of their own to make wine from...