Bonarda or Douce Noir is a grape best known in Argentina. It’s Argentina’s second most planted red grape after the much more famous Malbec.It has intense big flavours of rich, dark cherries and plums that can often be jammy or cooked in flavour. The grape also has floral, violet notes and sweet spices. These big flavours mean that the wines are rarely aged in oak barrels as this will detract from the profile. For all these big flavours it has relatively low tannins but high acidity which means it isn’t a big, powerful mouth-filling wine. It is a late ripening grape and often one of the last to be picked. 

There has been much confusion over this variety as it was originally thought to be the same as Italy’s Bonarda, however, they are different grapes. There is an Italian variety with the full name Bonarda Piemontese, and also another wine in Italy called Bonarda made from the Croatina grape.