In case you’re wondering, “variety” is the noun, and “varietal” is the adjective. So Merlot is a grape variety, but a wine that’s made from Merlot is a varietal wine.
But even wine writers are guilty of erroneously using varietal as a noun. Some people know it’s not correct but use it anyway. In her book “Wine. All the Time: The Casual Guide to Confident Drinking,” Marissa A. Ross writes that “Varietal is a word people in wine use for a single type of grape.” Below, she elaborates: “*Some people say the plural varietals and use varieties. I feel there can be varieties of anything and take poetic license with varietals to make it wine-grape specific.”
Ross is far from alone. Many people use varietal this way, although it is best used to describe a wine made from a single grape: a varietal wine.
How did an adjective begin masquerading all around the wine industry as a noun? And should wine lovers worry about this slippage, and attempt to correct it, putting the words back in their original places? Or do we — tomato, tom-ah-to — call the whole thing off?
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