"I find people are shying away from Chardonnay," says sommelier Linda Gerin, co-owner of the restaurant Jean-Louis in Greenwich, CT, "and asking for more unusual wines, such as viognier."

So true.

Viognier is the wine of the moment. Yet the corkiest of the wine dorks and Gen XYZ are constantly looking to the future to seek out the more obscure wine grapes to pronounce the next big thing.

And what is the next big thing?

Depending on who you ask or which wine writer you read, it could be anything. So for the sake of bringing a somewhat obscure French grape to the limelight, let's take a look at a grape called marsanne.

Marsanne is one of the classic Rhone varietals, producing a deeply colored, almost amber white wine with an aroma of saffron, almond, and marzipan. It is believed to have originated in the town of Marsanne, near Montelimar in the northern Rhone Valley and is one of the eight white grapes permitted in the Cotes du Rhone appellation.

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