(Forbes) - “ Portuguese wines are selling very well to Millennials and to Generation X. They are more open. They don’t care so much about grape varieties”, Nuno Vale said to me when over a refreshing glass of Arinto we were having dinner in Lisbon the other day. Nuno should know. He is Chief Marketing Officer for ViniPortugal, the organisation in charge of promoting Portuguese wines across the world.

We were discussing the challenges of selling wines made from grapes with names such as Tinta Cão, Alfrocheiro, Antão Vaz and Tinta Roriz, to mention but a few of the indigenous grape varieties that you find in Portugal. They do use some standard issue grapes too, like Cabernet, Chardonnay and so forth, but the traditional Portuguese varieties are very dominant.

In fact, they make some outstanding wines in Portugal. Although it is a country mostly known for its fortified port wines the majority of the wines made in this southern European country is table wines. But more on that in a minute.

I had challenged Nuno by saying that it can’t be very easy to sell Portuguese wines in North America with the kind of grape names common in Portugal. A couple of years back when we were doing research for one of our wine books we talked to another expert on the US wine market, Pierre Wertheimer. He has been selling and promoting French wines in the US for many years. Pierre told us “if you don’t put the grape variety on the label in the US you can’t sell the wine, and it needs to be a well-known grape”.

Not much luck for Portugal there.