Wine appreciation: For a wine with history and taste, you must get a Muscat

It's easy to find wines that recall peach, blossom, leather, pencil shavings - or even the smell of your grandparent's garden shed in Autumn 1982 - but 'grapey-ness' remains a remarkably elusive note given wine's usual base materials.

This unusual grapey savour isn't Muscat's only particularity, however - it's also unusually old. The ancient Greeks made wine from the variety during the rare moments they weren't busy inventing democracy or hiding, armed to the teeth, inside wooden animals. A consistent favourite throughout history, it was also the main ingredient in the once-famous South African Constantia dessert wines, hugely popular with powdered, gout-ridden French aristocrats in the period shortly before the guillotine unburdened them of their carbuncled heads.

Since then, however, Muscat has suffered a slight slide in prestige. This is largely because the best Muscat variety - the snappily named Muscat Blanc à Petit Grains - has to compete with a host of other somewhat inferior cousins such as Muscat of Alexandria and Muscat Ottonel. Furthermore, as the family has spread across the world's vineyards as widely as ticks on a dying stag, the variety's name itself is not a good benchmark of quality, as Muscat wines can vary from excellent in Alsace to execrable in Albania.

Among a choice of many, perhaps the most widely known Muscat wines are Asti Spumante and its more sophisticated (and less alcoholic) sibling, Moscato D'Asti, fresh fizzy Italian stuff that most people don't take terribly seriously. Because these wines are cheaper, more accessible and far less complex than champagne, they tend to be rather sneered at in Britain, which is a pity. Granted, they're low in alcohol, unfashionably sweetish and lack ageing potential, but they can still be very fruity, summery and aromatic, great as a light aperitif that isn't so potent as to knock out hungry diners before they reach table. To try it out in a small dose, try one of Oddbins' half bottles of Chiarlo Nivole Moscato D'Asti, on sale at £5.49. With a lively fizz and a wonderful peach and apricot flavour, it's as light as beer at just 5.5 per cent alcohol and would go well with after-dinner fruit (it's not quite sweet enough to stand up to anything more sugary).

For a drier, arguably more sophisticated exposition of the grape's potential, try Alsace, where Muscat has long been a speciality. While they don't quite reach the aromatic exuberance of Gewurtztraminer, Alsace Muscats still have the pungent fruitiness to them you would expect this far north.