Pinot Gris vs Pinot Grigio: One Grape, Two Wines

Here is one of wine’s best-kept open secrets: Pinot Gris and Pinot Grigio are exactly the same grape. Not cousins, not relatives — the identical vine, grown from the same genetic material. Yet the two names summon two completely different wines: the rich, honeyed, weighty Pinot Gris of Alsace, and the pale, crisp, easy-drinking Pinot Grigio that fills glasses from Milan to Manhattan. Same grape, opposite philosophies.

How one variety came to lead this double life — and how it collected a tangle of other names along the way, from Ruländer to the now-banned “Tokay” — is a story about mutation, marketing, and even European trade law. It begins with a grape that literally changed colour.

One grape, two wines

The gulf between Pinot Gris and Pinot Grigio is not about the grape but about the winemaker’s intent. In Alsace, growers let it ripen fully and treat it as a serious, weighty white — oily in texture, generous in body, tasting of ripe pear, honey, ginger, and smoke, and often finished off-dry or, in great years, richly sweet.¹ In northern Italy, the same grape is picked earlier and made lean and pale, a bone-dry, zesty, refreshing wine built for easy drinking rather than contemplation.²

Neither is wrong; they are two answers to the same question. The Italian style, in particular, has conquered the world precisely because it is simple, crisp, and food-friendly. But it means most drinkers know this grape only through its lightest expression — and would scarcely recognise the same variety in a golden, honeyed Alsace bottle.

A grape that changed colour

Pinot Gris earns the “gris” — French for grey — from its oddly coloured berries, which ripen to a dusky greyish-pink or brownish-rose rather than the green of a normal white grape or the black of a red.³ That is because it is not really a white grape at all. It is a colour mutation of red Pinot Noir, genetically all but identical to it and to white Pinot Blanc; the three are essentially the same vine wearing different coats.

Those pinkish skins give the grape a hidden option. Left in contact with the juice, they can tint the wine a coppery pink — the style Italians call ramato, “coppered” — a reminder that this “white” grape is only a mutation away from being red. It is one of the clearest illustrations in wine of how a single genetic hiccup can rewrite a grape’s whole identity.

The many names, and the death of “Tokay”

Few grapes travel under as many aliases. In Germany it is Ruländer, said to be named for a merchant, Johann Seger Ruland, who propagated it in the early eighteenth century; more recently Germans have relabelled the dry version Grauer Burgunder.⁷ Hungary calls it Szürkebarát, “the grey monk”; Burgundy once knew it as Pinot Beurot; and for centuries Alsace called its version “Tokay d’Alsace.”

That last name became a casualty of European politics. Hungary, protective of its famous sweet Tokaj, objected to the Alsace “Tokay,” and as Hungary joined the European Union the two sides agreed to phase the name out: “Tokay Pinot Gris” served as an interim label before the “Tokay” was dropped entirely in 2007.⁴ A grape name used for generations was legislated out of existence to protect a completely different wine — a small reminder of how much of what is on a wine label is decided in courtrooms and trade negotiations, not vineyards.

The Pinot Grigio craze

The version of this grape that conquered the world is a fairly recent invention. In 1961 the northern Italian producer Santa Margherita pioneered vinifying the grey grapes as a crisp, pale, bone-dry white, rather than the fuller styles that had come before — and in doing so essentially created modern Pinot Grigio.⁵ It was clean, light, and instantly likeable.⁶

The American importer Anthony Terlato tasted it, recognised its appeal, and brought it to the United States, where Pinot Grigio grew into one of the best-selling white wines in the country.⁸ The result is a lovely irony: one of the world’s most genetically distinctive grapes — a colour-shifting mutation with a dozen names and a rich Alsace pedigree — is known to most drinkers as the easiest, lightest pour on the list. (See also our profile of its parent, Pinot Noir.)

This day in wine history

• Middle Ages
  A grape mutates from Pinot Noir

  Pinot Gris arises as a grey-berried colour mutation of Pinot Noir and spreads through Burgundy, Alsace, and Germany.

• 1711
  The Ruländer name is born

  A German merchant, Johann Seger Ruland, is credited with propagating the grape, which Germany calls Ruländer.

• 1961
  Modern Pinot Grigio is created

  Santa Margherita begins vinifying the grey grapes as a crisp, pale, dry white, inventing the light style the world now knows.

• 2007
  “Tokay d’Alsace” retired

  The EU completes the phase-out of the Alsace “Tokay” name to protect Hungary’s Tokaj.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• Pinot Noir, the red grape Pinot Gris mutated from
• Alsace, home of the grape’s richest style
• Riesling, Alsace’s other great white
• The origins of wine

References

1. Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding & José Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes (Allen Lane, 2012), Pinot Gris entry. ↩
2. Jancis Robinson, “Pinot Grigio,” jancisrobinson.com. jancisrobinson.com. ↩
3. Jancis Robinson (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Wine (Pinot Gris). ↩
4. On the EU phase-out of the “Tokay d’Alsace” name (completed 2007), Conseil Interprofessionnel des Vins d’Alsace. ↩
5. Santa Margherita, history of dry Pinot Grigio (from 1961). santamargherita.com. ↩
6. Consorzio Alto Adige Wines, Pinot Grigio origin factsheet. altoadigewines.com. ↩
7. “Ruländer” (Johann Seger Ruland), Deutsches Weininstitut. germanwines.de. ↩
8. Anthony Terlato and the US Pinot Grigio boom, Terlato Wines. terlatowines.com. ↩

Wine Grapes
Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding & José Vouillamoz
The definitive guide to 1,368 varieties, including the Pinot family in full.

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