Inzolia/Ansonica - Sicily and Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, Italy

A few days ago, we took a look at a grape known as Garganega in the Veneto in northeastern Italy and as Grecanico Dorato in Sicily way down in southern Italy, but virtually nowhere in between.  While I found that particular geographical situation odd, it is certainly not unique.  Today's grape, for example, is found primarily in Sicily, but is also fairly well represented in Tuscany and has been known in each of those areas for over 300 years, but aside from a few stray vines in Sardinia, Campania and Lazio, it isn't really grown anywhere else.  In Sicily, that grape is known as Inzolia while in Tuscany, it is known as Ansonica and today I'd like to take a closer look at it and its journey.

As mentioned above, Inzolia/Ansonica are first mentioned definitively in the literature around the 16th or 17th centuries.  I say definitively because the ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder mentions a grape called Irziola in his Naturalis Historia, which some have taken to be the first mention of Inzolia in print, but aside from their similar sounds, there is no evidence that indicates that Pliny was talking about the grape we know as Inzolia today.  In Sicily, Inzolia has historically been found mainly on the western end of the island where it is has been valued as an ingredient, along with Grillo, in high-end Marsala production.  As the production of high-end Marsala has fallen, Inzolia has given way to Catarratto, which is more widely used for low-end Marsala production.  Inzolia is still relatively widely planted, though, as current Sicilian acreage stands at around 19,000 acres.  As table wine production has taken off in Sicily over the past few decades, more and more of the existing Inzolia plantings have been used for that purpose as well.

In Tuscany, the grape is known as Ansonica and is planted mainly along the coast and on some of the nearby islands of the Tuscan archipelago.  The most famous of these seven islands is Elba, where Napoleon was banished in 1814, and while Ansonica is grown there, the island we're most concerned with is called Giglio.  Giglio is a small (about 1.36 square miles), mountainous island made primarily of granite and located about 10 miles from the Tuscan shore.  It has been inhabited since the Stone Age and has been ruled over by the Etruscans, Greeks, Romans and Florentines among others.  At various times throughout history, the island has been completely abandoned as invading forces deported the native population, but it has always been resettled eventually.  Grapes have been grown on this island since at least the 6th Century BC, and today, Ansonica is the mostly widely planted grape there.

Despite their geographical distance, ampelographers have long suspected that Inzolia and Ansonica were the same grape and the Italian authorities have recognized them as the same for many years.  In 1999, the first DNA evidence started coming in which validated this particular hypothesis.  An Italian team used AFLP markers, which are a little bit different from the microsatellite markers primarily used today, to show that the Ansonica from Giglio was most closely related to Ansonica from the Tuscan mainlaind, Inzolia from Sicily, Roditis from Greece, Airén from Spain and Clairette from France.  While these results are interesting, we do have to take them with a grain of salt.  AFLP analysis is looking at DNA sites throughout a sample's genome, which means that it can be more precise than microsatellite analysis, but that precision isn't necessarily a good thing.  If you're looking for a murderer, then you want to be as precise as possible, but when you're dealing with families of plants that are subject to genetic mutation over time, that precision can indicate differences in two plants that you would otherwise consider to be identical.*  Clonal variants can show up in AFLP analysis as different varieties, as can geographically disparate populations that shared a common ancestor hundreds of years ago, but which have been evolving separately from one another ever since.  This is the case with Inzolia and Ansonica, and this AFLP analysis was able to show that there were differences not only between Tuscan Ansonica and Sicilian Inzolia, but also between Ansonica from Giglio and Ansonica from Tuscany.  The two Ansonicas were closer to one another than to Inzolia from Sicily and the Tuscan Ansonica was closer to the Sicilian Inzolia than the Giglio Ansonica was, which would indicate that the grape likely came from Sicily to Tuscany and then to Giglio.

I mentioned above that this study also found similarities between Inzolia/Ansonica and Roditis, Airén and Clairette, and this probably needs a bit of explanation as well.  Many genetic studies compare large groups of grapes from specific geographic regions in order to see how similar they are to one another genetically.  The theory is that grapes from a certain region have likely been together a very long time and are probably distantly related to one another in ways that are too complicated to tease out with pedigree analysis.  When testing a large pool of grapes, the scientists look to see which grapes have the most DNA in common with one another and then hypothesize that these grapes are then more closely related to one another than to the other grapes in the study.  The main problem in interpreting the results is that you are limited by the number and the variety of grapes in a study.  The results are really only telling you that these grapes are more like each other than the other grapes in the study, which can be problematic if you've chosen your samples poorly.  Imagine a study like this done with human beings where you're Italian and your family has lived in a small village for hundreds of years.  The researchers select you and a handful of people from your town and compare them with another group from the mountains of Tibet.  The study should show that you are more closely related to the people from your village than the villagers of Tibet.  Now imagine that the study took you, one person from the village in Tibet, and a pack of chimpanzees.  Suddenly you and the Tibetan villager look a lot more closely related.

The point is that these relatedness studies can be useful, but they can also be misleading.  The group above sampled a very high number of Greek grapes along with a handful of grapes from a whole bunch of different regions all over the world.  They tested very few Sicilian or Tuscan varieties, which one would expect to be more closely related, and so the results may be a little skewed.  They interpreted their results as showing that Inzolia likely came from Greece, due to its relatedness to Roditis, into Sicily before moving to Tuscany and then to Giglio.  In Wine Grapes, Vouillamoz points to a 2010 study (citation 1) where another Italian team analyzed 82 different Sicilian grapes to see how closely they were related as refutation of the study above.  They found that Inzolia was mostly closely related to a few other varieties with Inzolia in the name (but which are separate varieties) such as Inzolia Imperiale and Inzolia Nera (which is not a red-berried mutation of Inzolia at all, but rather a separate variety).  Further, this group also had similarities with Coda di Volpe, Grecanico, Frappato, Carricante and Nerello Mascalese among others.  Vouillamoz claims that the relatedness of Inzolia to these other Sicilian grapes indicates that it is likely from Sicily and not from Greece.  Since this particular study did not include any Greek grape varieties, it seems difficult to compare the results from the different studies and come to that kind of conclusion.  Both studies do seem to indicate that Inzolia came from Sicily to Tuscany, but whether it is native to Sicily or whether its ancestors or Greek seems to still be an open question.

I was able to try two different wines, one from Sicily and one from Giglio, made from the Inzolia/Ansonica grape.  The first was the 2009 Ansonaco from Familia Carfagna, which I picked up for around $50 from my friends at the Wine Bottega (though I have recently seen it available at Curtis Liquors as well).  In the glass the wine was a medium bronze gold color.  The nose was intense with aromas of ripe red apples, toasted nuts, apple cider, poached pear, brown sugar, dried apple and abundant autumn spice.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly acidity.  There were flavors of dried apricot, red apple, apple cider, toasted almonds, autumn spice and dried leaves.  I would have sworn that this wine saw some skin contact, but this website seems to indicate no maceration.  I thought this was a really gorgeous wine that was an absolute pleasure to drink.  It should be drunk at cellar or room temperature, as the cold really blunts the aromas and flavors.  It is a bit pricey but I thought it was worth every penny.  You probably could pair this with some food, but I really just enjoyed it on its own.

The second wine that I tried was the 2010 Case Ibidni Inzolia from Sicily, which I picked up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $12.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon yellow color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of ripe white pear, green melon, ripe apple and something vaguely tropical.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of ripe, round white pear and red apple along with a touch of mild pineapple and banana.  Inzolia does have a tendency to get flabby if not picked early enough, and I think that these grapes maybe hung on the vine a little too long.  It had some of those flat fruit-cocktail kinds of flavors going on and really wasn't my thing.

Reader and frequent commenter WineKnurd was able to try a more recent vintage (2011) of this wine which he picked up from his friends at Wine Authorities in Durham, North Carolina.  His tasting note reads:

"100% Insolia from Sicily, 12.5% abv with a slight spritz in the glass on first pour. Classic Italian white wine nose full of wet stone and minerals backed with notes of fresh cut granny smith apple and some hints of cantaloupe rind. The palate was lighter and less intense than I was expecting based on the nose and the wine in general had lower acidity than what I was expecting for an Italian white. Up front there are flavors of sour apple and melon rind but somewhere along the mid-palate it thins out and finishes weak. My guess is that this needs to be consumed as fresh as possible in Sicily, not a year behind in the USA. At $12.99 it doesn't break the bank but this is money better spent elsewhere."

CITATION

1) Carimi, F, Mercati, F, Abbate, L, & Sunseri, F.  2010.  Microsatellite analyses for evaluation of genetic diversity among Sicilian grapevine cultivars.  Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution.  57(5): pp 703-719.

*It really seems to be taken for granted that Inzolia and Ansonica are genetically identical, but I actually was not able to find any studies that specifically prove the synonymy.  I checked the microsatellite profile data in the VIVC with the data given for Inzolia in Citation 1 and found that the adjusted values matched at all six sites, so that's good enough for me.

Malvar - Vinos de Madrid, Spain

Image from the excellent Vinos Ambiz blog

Today's post was supposed to be a breeze.  I had a nice little bottle of wine made from a grape called Malvar that looked like it was going to be fairly easy to find a little information on and write about.  I checked the Oxford Companion to Wine online version first and the first sentence there is "also known as Lairén."  I next went to check out what Wine Grapes had to say about the grape, and the entry in that book also referred me to the post on Lairén.  I went to check out the entry for Lairén and I saw that the authors have Malvar listed as an accepted synonym along with the little symbol that they use to show that this particular synonymy has been verified by DNA analysis.  As I read through the "Origins and Parentage" section, I started to notice that most of the text is devoted to showing that Lairén and Airén are two different grapes and there is no mention made of Malvar at all.  As I read through the entire entry, I realized that no citation is given for the synonymy between Lairén and Malvar at all.  I started to have a familiar feeling.

I checked out some of the citations given for the differentiation between Lairén and Airén and also some of the other papers concerning Spanish wines that I have on hand and noticed something interesting.  Not only do none of these papers indicate that Malvar and Lairén are synonyms, but several of them (citation 1 and 2 below) have huge charts showing the genetic profiles of all the grapes that were analyzed in each particular study.  These charts had entries for Airén, Lairén and Malvar and all three profiles were different.  For those new to these studies (some background here), if all three grapes have distinct DNA profiles (as these three do), then they're all separate grape varieties.  Furthermore, one of these studies (citation 1) was specifically cited by Vouillamoz in Wine Grapes as providing evidence that Lairén and Airén were two different grapes (the other study he cites also shows that those two grapes are different, but it doesn't mention Malvar at all, so it doesn't concern us here).

Despite the claim put forward in the OCW and in Wine Grapes, I cannot find any evidence that indicates that Malvar and Lairén are the same grape.  A few sources indicate that Malvar and Airén have historically been confused with one another, and one paper even has a sample labeled Malvar that was actually Airén, but they clarify this finding by saying "'Malvar' is sometimes confused with 'Airén' (IBAÑEZ et al. 2003), but is clearly separable by microsatellite analysis; hence, accession 3 is considered to be a misnamed genotype and not a homonym of 'Malvar' (43)."  As you might expect, Lairén and Airén have historically been confused for one another as well, but as we've already indicated, several DNA analyses have shown that these are two different grapes.  No study that I've been able to find has given any indication that Malvar is the same grape as Lairén, and in fact, all the genetic evidence that I've seen seems to clearly indicate that they are separate grapes.

Now that we know what Malvar probably isn't, let's try to find out a little bit more about what it is.  Malvar is a white wine grape that is grown to a very limited extent in central Spain, and in 2008 its planting figures stood at around 650 acres.  It is most often found in the Vinos de Madrid DO, which is located just south of the city of Madrid and just north of the region of La Mancha.  It is also permitted in Mondéjar and Ribera del Guadiana, but it is really most important in Madrid.  Compared to Airén, Malvar is a less generous yielder and more of an early ripener.  It also has higher acidity and some producers produce a late harvest wine from its berries because of its ability to maintain balance late into its ripening process.  When made into a table wine, Malvar is often blended with Airén, but several producers do make varietal versions as well.

I was able to find a bottle of the 2011 Zestos Malvar from my friends at Curtis Liquors for around $10.  In the glass the wine was a medium silvery lemon color.  The nose was intense with aromas of peach, grapefruit, honey, lime and honeysuckle flower. On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of peach, lime, grapefruit, and honeysuckle with a lovely stony minerality to the finish.  The wine was very citrusy right out of the bottle, but as it opened up it started to pick up more tropical banana and melon flavors.  The nose was just gorgeous and it was a real pleasure just to sit and enjoy it for a little while before having a sip.  This bottle over-delivers for the money in a really big way.  Fans of aromatic white wines will really find a lot to like here, as will fans of high-acid, food friendly wines that aren't wallet-busters.  Malvar is definitely a more assertive grape than Airén but since I've never had a wine made from Lairén, I can't offer any insight as to how similar or dissimilar they may be.

CITATIONS

1)  Ibanez, J., de Andrea, M.T., Molino, A., & Borrego, J. "Genetic Study of Key Spanish Grapevine Varieties Using Microsatellite Analysis." American Journal of Enology and Viticulture (54:1). 2003. 22-30.

2)  Martin, J.P., Borrego, J., Cabello, F., & Ortiz, J.M. "Characterization of Spanish Grapevine Cultivar Diversity Using Sequence-Tagged Microsatellite Site Markers." Genome (46). 2003. 10-18.

Roter Veltliner - Niederösterreich, Austria

I suppose when you decide to write about a grape called Roter Veltliner, it's probably best to go ahead and address the elephant in the room before going any further: no, Roter Veltliner is not related to Grüner Veltliner (or at least not very closely).  This seems difficult to believe given the similarities of their names, but in 1998, an Austrian research team was able to show that not only were Grüner Veltliner and Roter Veltliner not related to one another, but further that Roter Veltliner actually seems to be the more important of the two cultivars in terms of genetic history and parentage (citation 1 below).  Today I'd like to take a closer look at the Roter Veltliner grape and its little family circle.

Grüner Veltliner is certainly more widely available, widely grown and widely hailed than Roter Veltliner, but it has very limited family connections with other Austrian grape varieties.  Grüner is the offspring of Savagnin/Traminer and an obscure grape called St. Georgen-Rebe, which was discovered in an overgrown patch in an abandoned lot in Austria (source).  If there are any other grapes that Grüner has a first-degree relationship with, I have not come across them in any of the literature.  Roter Veltliner, on the other hand, is a key part of what is commonly known as the "Veltliner family," which Grüner is actually not a member of.  The family relationships break down like this:

- Roter Veltliner crossed with Savagnin to create Rotgipfler (which makes Rotgipfler and Grüner Veltliner half-siblings since they share Savagnin as a parent)
- Roter Veltliner also crossed with Silvaner (which is itself an offspring of Savagnin and Österreichisch weiß) to create Neuburger and Frühroter Veltliner
- Frühroter Veltliner was crossed with Grauer Portugieser (which is the pink-berried form of Blauer Portugieser) to create Jubiläumsrebe

Wine Grapes reports that Roter Veltliner likely crossed with a close relative of Traminer/Savagnin to create Zierfandler, but the paper that they cite for support for this doesn't seem to mention Zierfandler at all (though it is in German, and I could be missing it [link immediately begins to download PDF]).  Furthermore, in the 1998 paper referenced above, the authors specifically say "in contrast to previous assumptions...no close genetic relationship between Rotgipfler and Zierfandler could be detected."  If the two grapes shared a common parent, you would expect them to have between 50 and 100% similar DNA, but this study indicates that they could find no such similarity between the two.  The lead author on the Wine Grapes referenced paper is actually also an author on the 1998 paper mentioned above (as well as the lead author on a follow-up paper in 2000, citation 2 below, which also doesn't mention Zierfandler but which traces the Veltliner family tree pretty thoroughly), so it seems odd that he'd not include those findings in either of the papers I've cited but would in the German paper cited by WG.  Since I can't find any published results which show a first degree relationship between Zierfandler and Roter Veltliner or Rotgipfler, and since the papers I've read certainly would have performed the analysis to check for a relationship, I feel OK in saying that there probably isn't one.

Some of you may still be puzzling over the fact that there is no relationship between Roter Veltliner and Grüner Veltliner despite their similar sounding names.  Since Grüner means "green"(and Grüner's berries are green)  and Roter means "red" (and Roter's berries are red) we should be able to find some link between the two grapes through the word "Veltliner," right?  Unfortunately, it isn't totally clear just where the "Veltliner" part of the name comes from.  Many believe that it comes from the word "Veltlin," which is the German word for "Valtellina," which is a valley in northern Lombardia in Italy that borders Switzerland.  The story goes that Grüner Veltliner was named for this valley because it was introduced from there by the Romans.  The problem with this is that the name only seems to  appear in print after 1855 and prior to that, the grape was called Weißgipfler or Grüner Muskateller (despite the fact that it is not related to the Muscat family either).  If the Veltliner were a reference to a Roman origin, it should be traceable further back than that through the historical record, but it doesn't seem to be.  This piece gives some interesting history, but it seems that the answer to the origin of the Veltliner name is still a mystery (though it is worth nothing that all of this research was done for Grüner and not Roter Veltliner, which is apparently not popular enough to warrant this kind of scholarship on its own).

Grüner Veltliner is easily the most widely planted grape in Austria, covering just over 42,000 acres of land in Austria.  Roter Veltliner, by contrast, is only planted on about 640 acres in Austria and is in fact more widely planted in Slovakia, where it covers nearly 900 acres of land.  As you might expect, wines made from it are considerably harder to find than wines made from Grüner, but I was able to find a bottle of the 2009 Ecker Eckhof Roter Veltliner from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for around $20.  In the glass the wine was a medium silvery lemon color.  The nose was fairly intense with lemon and lime citrus aromas along with some green apple and a touch of apricot.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of lemon, green apple, lime peel, and lees with a mouthwatering, stony mineral finish.  It was bright, zippy and tart but with nice body and complexity as well.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and found myself disappointed that there weren't more examples around that I could try.  It's definitely something I'll be keeping an eye out for in the future.

1) Sefc, KM, Steinkellner, H, Glossl, J, Kampfer, S, & Regner, F.  1998.  Reconstruction of a grapevine pedigree by microsatellite analysis.  Theoretical and Applied Genetics.  97, pp 227-231

2) Regner, F, Sefc, K, Glossl, J & Steinkellner, H.  2000.  Parentage analysis and pedigree reconstruction of vine cultivars using microsatellite markers.  Acta Horticulturae.  528, pp 133-138,

Book Review - Wine Grapes, by Robinson, Harding & Vouillamoz

When I first learned about the impending publication of the massive Wine Grapes, I was both excited and a little nervous.  I was excited because it looked to be just the kind of thing that could help me a lot in doing research for this blog, but at the same time, I worried that its publication would make me obsolete.  The book purported to be the ultimate guide to wine grapes, and I worried that everything interesting that could be said about many of the grapes that I try would already be said here and there would be no reason for me to continue with this site.  I pre-ordered the book many months in advance and began the waiting process.  That process ended a few months ago with the release (and delivery) of this massive tome, which I've now had some time to read through and put some thoughts together about.

Those who are unfamiliar with some of my other posts should note that I've had some issues in the past with the crew responsible for publishing this book.  This is the same editorial team that is responsible for maintaining the online version of the Oxford Companion to Wine, and many of the findings from this book were previously published through that venue.  In several of my prior posts, I've noted issues or problems that I've found in the online version of the OCW, some of which I addressed to the editors, but none of which were really satisfactorily resolved.  The first involved their entry on Hondarrabi Zuri (link goes to my discussion of the issue), where they claimed that it was actually the same as the American hybrid Noah, while the second involved their publication of an alternate parentage for Emerald Riesling, which turned out to be correct, but which they refused to divulge their source for.  I'm not going to delve back into either of those topics, as I've said all I card to say in those posts, so interested readers are advised to follow the links and read away.

Before I get into the issues I have with this new book, I do want to start out with a list of the things that I really liked about it.

1) It is gorgeous.  The layout is easy to follow and though there is a lot of information presented for most of the grapes, the book never feels overwhelming.  The slipcase is a nice touch as well and I much prefer the burgundy color for the US publication to the cream color for the UK.

2) Most of what is presented is accurate.  The book is thoroughly researched not only from a scientific standpoint, but from a historical and ampelographical one as well.  Much of the information provided is adequately cited and the bibliography is comprehensive.

3) The scope of the work is astounding.  It claims to be a "complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties," and while I didn't count to make sure they're telling the truth, the 7 pound weight and nearly 1,250 pages would seem to indicate that they are.  There is no other single volume available with more information on more grape varieties than this.  No really serious wine adventurer will want to be without this volume for very long.

4) The signed bookplates that the group gave away was a very nice touch.  All you had to do was email your address to someone affiliated with the publication team and they mailed out a book plate signed by all three authors for you to affix to the inside cover of your tome (for free!).  If you haven't ordered the book yet or haven't yet asked for a signed bookplate, you're probably too late, I'm afraid to say, as they only did a few hundred of them.  I'm happy to have received mine and think it was a nice way for the contributors to thank people for laying out some serious cash for this book.

All that said, there are some issues I have with the book.

1) The color plates.  There are 5 sections within the book that contain 8-10 pages of full color reprints of illustrations from a turn of the century (last century) work of ampelography.  These sections are evenly spaced throughout the book.  They're printed on a different kind of paper that is actually a different size (smaller) than the rest of the pages, and when you try to flip through the book, you inevitably land on one of these sections.  They're nice to look at, but they're completely unnecessary and kind of in the way.  The book retails for $175, and one wonders how much of that they could have shaved off by doing away with these.

2) It is sometimes difficult to find exactly the grape you're looking for.  They put a grape's main entry under its most common synonym in the country that is thought to be its ultimate home.  This is fine for most grapes, but you end up with some weird things like having Carignan listed under Mazuelo, which is a synonym I'm only familiar with in Rioja.  The index is helpful for navigating around this issue (which was probably inevitable given the book's scope), but flipping back and forth in a 1,250 page work is no picnic.  There are some guidepost entries throughout the text that redirect you to the proper name, but these are somewhat erratically placed.

3) The research.  This is my biggest issue, and it's what I'm going to spend the bulk of the rest of this review talking about.  If you don't care about it, feel free to close this browser window now and you'll be welcome back when I get back to reviewing unusual wines in the next few days.

The problems I have with the research for this volume fall into two broad categories.  The first category concerns research done by others that is reported in Wine Grapes.  As I mentioned earlier, most of the information in the book is accurate and is well researched, but there are a few places where the research is either sloppy or inaccurate for personal reasons.

For example, I recently wrote about the Fetească Albă grape from Romania, and in that post I lamented that the OCW mentioned that the long-accepted synonymy between this grape and the Leányka of Hungary was inaccurate, but I had some difficulty tracking down their source for the information since it was only cryptically mentioned and not cited.  This assertion is reprinted in Wine Grapes, and 2 citations are given.  One is the paper that I mentioned in my post on Fetească Albă, which has some serious methodological issues and can hardly be taken to be indisputable (please see that post for more details).  The other is this paper from a Hungarian team, which, while interesting, does not actually say anything at all about the relationship between Fetească Albă and Leányka.  It does say that Leányka and a grape called Leányszolo are not identical, but there is no mention at all of Fetească Albă anywhere in the paper.  Citations are great, but only if the research that you're pointing to actually says what you're claiming it says.

As for the charge of inaccuracies due to personal reasons, the example of Ciliegiolo and Sangiovese provides a nice example.  As mentioned in my previous post on the Ciliegiolo grape, the exact relationship between Ciliegiolo and Sangiovese is contentious.  It is known that the two grapes have a parent/offspring relationship, but there are two different theories as to which is the parent and which is the offspring.  The first was reported by Jose Vouillamoz (and several other Italian scientists) in 2007 and they claim that Sangiovese's parents are Ciliegiolo and a grape called Calabrese di Montenuovo (which Vouillamoz & crew supposedly just stumbled across somewhere in Calabria...it is unclear whether it exists in any holding facilities or even whether any other research teams have been able to obtain a sample to test for themselves, all of which will lead into my final issue in the following paragraph).  The second (authored by Di Vecchi Staraz and others, full citations are in my Ciliegiolo post linked above) shows that Sangiovese and a grape called Muscat Rouge de Madére are the parents of Ciliegiolo.  Vouillamoz's results have not been duplicated by any other group, but Di Vecchi Staraz's findings have been duplicated in at least 2 different studies.  Wine Grapes, whose scientific content was edited by Vouillmoz, presents Vouillamoz's findings as if they were the final word on the matter.  The book does make mention of Di Vecchi Staraz's findings, but dismisses them because they "do not fit with the parentage of Sangiovese (Vouillamoz, Monaco et al 2007)," which is question begging of the worst kind.  The book does note that there were other "discrepancies" in Di Vecchi Staraz's findings, but I've not seen those discrepancies indicated anywhere else, and, as mentioned above, there have been 2 studies in the past year that have shown that Di Vecchi Staraz's analysis is correct.*

All of which brings me to my major second concern with some of the research presented in Wine Grapes, which is that it is private research.  There are many posts where the citation for the information provided is given simply as (Vouillamoz).  Vouillamoz has several publications listed in the bibliography of the book, and when one of them is referenced, the year is always given.  These (Vouillamoz) citations represent something different, though, which isn't ever really fully explained in the text.  Vouillamoz maintains a private DNA microsatellite database with information on various grapes that he has either analyzed in the course of his research, or which may have come from other studies that he has read.  Much of the stuff that the OCW has published, and many of the relationships published in Wine Grapes, were "discovered" by Vouillamoz by sifting through the information in his private database, or by Vouillamoz conducting experiments on his own and publishing the results in Wine Grapes for the first time.

As an example, Wine Grapes publishes that Listán Prieto, aka Mission, and Listán Negro from the Canary Islands are actually two different grapes, despite the fact that they have long been considered to be the same variety. Vouillamoz claims that a "study" has shown that Listán Negro actually has a distinct DNA profile, but his citation is "(Vouillamoz; Jorge Zerolo, personal communication)," neither of which can be called a "study" in any meaningful sense.  The information is presented, though, in a way that makes it seem like the finding has been verified by DNA research (there is an icon in the book, that is probably supposed to look like a double-helix but which just looks like a circle with open semicircles on its top and bottom, used to represent when a synonym or a homonym has been "verified" by DNA studies, and that icon is used here), when in fact it seems that it has only been seen in one non-published "experiment."

Here's the problem with this: it isn't science**.  The information that Vouillamoz chooses to publish in this way may be interesting, but it's wrong to consider these findings "scientific" in any way.  There's a process that people have to go through in order for their ideas to be accepted by the wider scientific community.  That process involves not only performing the experiments and analyzing the results, but publishing them in a peer-reviewed journal as well.  If you read through any of the papers I link to on this site, you'll see that they aren't just a guy asking a question and then announcing that he's answered the question.  The paper goes through the entire set-up for the experiment and shows the data obtained from the experiment described.  This process exists so that other scientists (or anybody, really) can analyze your methodology and your results to see whether your experiment actually can give the kind of information that you claim it can and whether it actually does give the information that you claim it does.  The foundation of good science is reproducibility, which means that others should be able to read your paper and perform your experiments themselves to see whether they obtain the same results as you.  Just publishing findings doesn't fly.  You're not right when you make a discovery; you're right when someone else verifies your results.***

I'm not suggesting Vouillamoz doesn't know what he's doing or that he has fabricated results.  What I am saying is that any information that he provides from private research or from any source that is not a scientific journal is unverified.  My issue isn't the publication of unverified findings, but rather that this information is presented to the reader in such a way that is difficult to separate from the more thoroughly researched findings.  It is given to the reader in a format that very closely resembles properly cited findings, so the lazy reader notes the parentheses and moves on, seeing a citation where none exists.  When citing the published results of others, readers can consult that source and decide for themselves whether the findings seem accurate given the description of the experiment and the publication of the data.  This empty citation, though, leads nowhere and does not even have a corresponding entry in the Bibliography.  It is telling us that Vouillamoz did something, but there's no way for us to see what it was.  By just giving the conclusion for this private research, the book is essentially asking us to take Vouillamoz's word that he did everything correctly and that his experiments and/or his interpretations are sound.  Given some of the issues I've encountered previously in his work, that doesn't feel like a safe assumption to make.

I'm not saying that Wine Grapes is worthless because of these issues.  As I said before, the overwhelming majority of the information in the book is accurate, interesting and informative.  What I am saying is that some of the information they present as if it were scientific fact is not that at all and should be taken with a grain of salt.  I feel that the book could have been better if some of the controversies were more thoroughly explained or if some of the posts had less of the authoritarian air that they carry.  Jose Vouillamoz is a good scientist, but asking a single scientist to compile all of the information for this book was probably not the best idea.  What you get is a single expert's bias, which doesn't produce a very scientific result.

My bottom line is that this book is now my first line of research for pretty much every post I'll write from here on out.  It's an incredible resource that I look forward to enjoying for many years.  But like any first line resource, I'm not going to be content to stop my research there, and I will pursue any questions I have as far as I can, or until I feel that they have been thoroughly answered.  Grape genetics is a rapidly moving field that I enjoy following along on the sidelines.  I think in about another decade, the 2nd or 3rd edition of this work may end up being definitive, but we're just not quite there yet.

*The first is mentioned in my post on Ciliegiolo. Citation is: Cipriani, G. et al. The SSR-based molecular profile of 1005 grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) accessions uncovers new synonymy and parentages, and reveals a large admixture amongst varieties of different geographic origin. 2010. Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 121: 1569-1585.

The second is Lacombe, T., Boursiquot, J.M., Laucou, V., Di Vecchi-Staraz, M., Peros, J.P., & This, P. 2012. Large scale parentage analysis in an extended set of grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.). Theoretical and Applied Genetics. In press.

**You may argue that I'm missing the point here.  This book is for entertainment purposes and is not intended to be a scientific treatise, you may say.  And you may be right.  But the book is being marketed in such a way and its content is arranged in such a way that the authors clearly want you to think that what they are publishing has been "scientifically proven."  I am arguing that this insinuation is dishonest on their part, as much of the data they are publishing is unproven in a scientific sense. Think I'm overstating their case? The following is the publisher's blurb for Wine Grapes from Amazon.com:

"Using cutting-edge DNA analysis and detailing almost 1,400 distinct grape varieties, as well as myriad correct (and incorrect) synonyms, this book examines grapes and wine as never before. Here is a complete, alphabetically presented profile of all grape varieties of relevance to the wine lover, charting the relationships between them and including unique and astounding family trees, their characteristics in the vineyard, and—most important—what the wines made from them taste like."

Their claim is that they have used "science" or some "science-like substance" to show the truth about many grapes and how they are or are not related to one another.  All I am trying to show is that their methodology isn't always sound, and as a result, some of the conclusions that they reach are hardly as definitive as the confident tone of the blurb and the text itself would lead you to believe.

***As I've pointed out numerous times on this site and a few times in this post, this isn't insignificant stuff (well, it may be in a cosmic sense, but you know what I mean).  Vouillamoz's claim regarding Fetească Albă and Leányka comes from a paper that used samples from a holding facility known to have labeling errors.  This is a methodological issue that requires follow-up research, but we wouldn't know that without the full published paper.  I don't believe that the follow-up research has been done, which only means that the question is currently open until proven otherwise (but if forced to make a decision, you're probably wiser staying away from the findings of a flawed study and opting instead for the belief that the prior hypothesis was correct).  Additionally, Vouillamoz's claim about the relationship between Ciliegiolo and Sangiovese has not been replicated by any other group, and it is unclear whether it can be because of the special nature of one of the purported parents.  If other groups cannot test Calabrese di Montenuovo themselves (and I do not know whether they can or not, but no one else has, as far as I can tell), then we just have to take Vouillamoz's word for it that the grape that he happened to stumble across (he himself says it was "fortuitously sampled") is the long-lost parent of one of the most famous wine grapes in the world. The thing is, we don't have to take his word for it, because we have information from three other publications from three other labs that have all independently shown that Vouillamoz's findings cannot possibly be right, since Sangiovese is itself a parent to Ciliegiolo and is not one of its offspring.  Their methodologies and results relied on grapes and samples that other labs could access and test themselves rather than on one-off field samples and private databases.

UPDATE: I uncovered a bit more on the Ciliegiolo/Sangiovese issue recently, and posted my findings in the comments to this post.  You can read the relevant information here.  

Fetească Albă - Cotnari, Romania

It's been quite awhile since we visited the land of Romania.  Several years back I wrote a post about a blended white wine from Romania that I tried that contained three Romanian grapes heavy on the diacritical marks: Fetească Albă, Frâncuşă and Tămâiosă.  Romanian wine isn't that easy to find in my neck of the woods, so it has taken awhile for me to revisit this country, but I've recently found a few interesting Romanian wines and hope to be able to write about some of them over the next few weeks.  One of the wines that I was able to find was a varietal Fetească Albă, and that's the one I'd like to write about today.

I gave a brief capsule history of Romania and Romanian wine in my prior post, so interested readers are advised to skim that piece for more information on those topics.  In brief, Romanian wine is still struggling to recover after decades of rule by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was only overthrown in 1989.  Romania has a rich history of wine making and was considered for many years to be among the greatest wine producing nations in the world, but they found themselves on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain in the early to mid 20th Century and they have struggled to re-emerge onto the world wine market.  They are currently about 12th in total production in the world, but Romanian wines are still difficult to find on American shelves.

There are actually three different Fetească grapes.  Fetească Neagră is a black skinned grape that does not appear to actually be related to the other Fetească grapes at all.  The two white-berried forms are Fetească Albă and Fetească Regală, which are sometimes said to be subvarieties of the same grape, which isn't really accurate.  Some sources also indicate that Fetească Regală is the offspring of Fetească Albă and Grasă de Cotnari, but this was disproven by a Hungarian research team in 2009 (citation 1).  Many of the grapes grown in Romania are also grown in Hungary, but the names of the grapes are often very different.  The Hungarian study looked at a grape they called Királyleányka, which is the same as the Fetească Regală of Romania.  They reported that the given pedigree for this grape was Leányka and Kövérszölö, which are Fetească Albă and Grasă de Cotnari, respectively.  They were able to rule out Grasă de Cotnari as one of the parents, but they also showed that there was almost certainly a parent/offspring relationship between Leányka and Királyleányka (incidentally, it turns out that the other parent for Fetească Regală is actually Frâncuşă, which was in the blend I wrote about previously (citation 3)).

I've reverted to using the Hungarian names rather than the Romanian ones there because there is apparently some controversy over whether Leányka is actually the same grape as Fetească Albă.  They have long been thought to be identical not only because they look very similar, but also because their names roughly translate to the same thing in their respective languages ("maiden's grape" or "young girl's grape").  Though nearly every resource I've read indicates that they are the same grape, the Oxford Companion to Wine cryptically mentions in both their entries on Fetească Albă and Leányka that an Austrian research team has shown that the two grapes are actually genetically distinct.  It took several hours of intense searching to even find the abstract for the paper I believe that the OCW is referencing, but I believe that I finally found it (citation 2). Though I wasn't able to read the paper, I did read the abstract, and something struck me. The relevant portion of the abstract is copied below.

"The cv. Feteasca alba is not identical to Leanika (Mädchentraube), therefore the supposed definition as synonymous cultivars is obsolete. The cv. Kiraly Leanika could be evaluated as an individual cultivar. However, synonyms were detected by comparing Chasselas de Courtillier and Madleine Royale."

This seems pretty benign, unless you remember those last two grapes mentioned from my post on Müller-Thurgau.  One of the parents of Müller-Thurgau was misidentified for many years as Chasselas de Courtiller because of a labeling mix up at a holding institution in Austria where a Madeleine Royale vine was mislabeled as Chassleas de Courtiller (it's a cool story and I'd really encourage you to read the post).  This raises several issues with the reputability of this particular paper.  First, it appears that the samples taken for this particular study were taken from Klausterneuberg, which is the same institution responsible for the mislabeled vines in the Müller-Thurgau story.  Further, their finding that Chasselas de Courtiller and Madeleine Royale are the same grape have been disproved (because of the labeling mishap), meaning that there is good cause to doubt the rest of their findings as well.  A dubious source for the plant material coupled with findings that have been disproved elsewhere means that it's difficult to take this paper's findings as fact without further corroboration.

This paper was written in 2001, and as far as I can tell, there are no other papers published since then that corroborate the results that this team found regarding Fetească Albă and Leányka.  The VIVC database considers the grapes to be identical even though they list the paper above in their extensive bibliography on the grape.  Further, in a very recent study (published in September 2012, citation 3 below) which discovered hundreds of pedigrees for different grape varieties, the author's notation for Fetească Albă is literally "Fetească Albă = Leányka."  While I wasn't able to find any direct evidence that shows that the two grapes are identical*, that certainly seems to be the common consensus and has been for some time.  There may be airtight evidence that I've overlooked somewhere, but right now, the case for the grapes being identical seems much stronger than the case against it.**

All of which finally brings us to the bottle of 2008 Cotnari Fetească Albă, which I picked up at the Wine Gallery in Brookline (who has a very nice eastern European section these days) for around $12.  In the glass, the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with peach, apricot and pineapple fruits along with some honey and honeysuckle flower as well.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  As it states on the label, it was also medium sweet.  There were flavors of pineapple and mandarin oranges along with some peach and a touch of honey.  Pineapple was far and away the dominant flavor note.  It came off a bit syrupy and probably could have used more acidity to balance it out, but overall, I thought it was a pretty good wine for only $12.  Fans of slightly sweet German wines will probably find a lot to like here, as will fans of spicy food, as this would likely match well with a variety of spicy Asian dishes.

CITATIONS

1) Kiss, E., Kozma, P., Halász, G., Molnár, S., Galbács, Z.S., Hoffmann, S., Veres, A., Galli, Z.S., Szőkel, A. and Heszky, L. 2009. Pedigree of Carpathian basin and Hungarian grapevine cultivars based on microsatellite analysis. Acta Hortitculturae (ISHS) 827:221-224

2) Regner, F.; Eisenheld, C.; Kaserer, H.; Stadlbauer, A. 2001. Weitere Sortenanalysen bei Rebe mittels genetischer Marker. [Further analyses for identification of grapevine by means of genetic markers]. Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg, Rebe und Wein, Obstbau und Früchteverwertung. 51(1) pp. 3-14.

3) Lacombe, T., Boursiquot, J.M., Laucou, V., Di Vecchi-Staraz, M., Peros, J.P., & This, P.  2012.  Large scale parentage analysis in an extended set of grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.).  Theoretical and Applied Genetics.  In press.

*This paper builds on another paper published by many of the same authors which analyzed the DNA of 4,370 different cultivars.  I wasn't able to find the list of all the grapes that were studied so I don't know whether Fetească Albă and Leányka were both in the study, but the "Fetească Albă = Leányka" notation leads me to think that perhaps they were.

**Look, I've done this dance several times already, so I'll spare everyone the rant and skip right to the point: CITE YOUR RESEARCH.   Not only for the sake of your readers, but also for the sake of the people whose ideas you're passing along, whether they're right or not.  If you didn't do the study, you need to tell your readers who did.

Cayetana Blanca (Pardina) - Ribera del Guadiana, Spain

When I'm looking for something to write about here, I often skip over tasting notes in my notebook for wines that I've tried but which I'm not looking forward to researching.  For the most part, these are grapes that I've done a bit of preliminary research on and have found very little information, so I usually put them off for awhile and eventually get around to them when I feel bad about having neglected them for so long.  I try to include new and interesting information about the grapes and wines that I write about, and it can be a real struggle to dig long enough to find it for some of them.  I thought that today's grape was going to be this kind of struggle, but I quickly realized how wrong I was.

A few months back, I was browsing around Ralph's Derby Street Wine & Spirits in Hingham, MA, and I came across a Spanish white wine made from a grape called Pardina.  I'd not heard of it before, but I know that there's a lot of overlap between Spanish and Portuguese grapes, and also that many of these grapes have numerous synonyms.  I quickly looked it up on my phone and saw that it wasn't anything that I'd tried before, so I took the bottle home and opened it a few weeks later.  I put off writing about it because my initial research (basically just Wikipedia on my iPhone) said that Pardina was sometimes also known as Pardillo, and that was pretty much it.  That's definitely not enough information to warrant an entire blog post, and I didn't have any real reason to suspect that I'd find much more than that, so I procrastinated doing the deep research on the grape until today.

It turns out that Pardina is kind of a big deal.  Neither Pardina nor Pardillo is actually this grape's official name.  It is listed in the VIVC database under Cayetana Blanca, where it has a whopping 82 synonyms, including both Pardina and Pardillo*.  More notable, though, is the synonym Jaén Blanco, which is the name it is perhaps best known under throughout Spain.  References to Jaén can be traced all the way back to the 16th Century, and in 1807, a Spanish writer, commenting on the confusion of the times resulting from the widespread use of the name Jaén for a multitude of unrelated white grapes, wrote "the first person to clarify exactly all cultivars that are called Jaén in Spain will make their country a royal service."  Modern DNA science has certainly helped to provide some clarification, and it is thought today that Jaén Blanco/Cayetana Blanca/Pardina/etc is planted on over 30,000 acres of land, making it approximately the sixth most planted cultivar in Spain.  Much of the juice from these grapes is ultimately distilled into brandy with very little making its way into table wine production (though this is starting to change in some areas).

Despite its lack of viticultural importance, it turns out that Cayetana is very important for genetic reasons.  A study in the past year (citation 1) sought to find possible familial relationships between Cayetana Blanca and other Spanish and Portuguese grapes.  The study started out by analyzing 838 different plants and eventually whittled the number down to just a handful.  Among the discoveries the group made was a fairly broad family, very much like the Pinot x Gouais Blanc family discussed in my Romorantin post, with Cayetana Blanca and Alfrocheiro, a red Portuguese grape, as the two parents.  They found five different grapes with this exact parentage: Malvasia Preta, Mouraton, Cornifesto, Camarate and Castelão.  They were also able to disprove a prior study that had indicated that Cayetana Blanca's parents were Antão Vaz and Rabo de Ovelha, but still showed that either of those grapes (just not both) could be a parent or offspring of Cayetana Blanca.  They further showed a possible parent/offspring relationship between Cayetana Blanca and several other Portuguese and Spanish grapes, though they were not able to prove the specific relationship.

One of the most interesting things that the study found was that Cayetana Blanca and Listán Prieto (better known as Listán Negro or Mission) were the parents of a grape called Jaén Tinto.  While Jaén Tinto is one of the more common synonyms for the Mencía grape of Bierzo, we're not talking about Mencía here.  This Jaén Tinto has been described in Spain since the 18th Century, though there is very little of it left today.  This parentage link is important because it seems to definitely point to a Spanish origin for the Mission grape.  Some sources have indicated that Mission was actually developed in the US from a seedling from a Spanish vine, but this seems highly unlikely given Mission's role in the parentage of Jaén.  The reasoning is that Jaén Tinto is mentioned in the Spanish literature as early as 1765, which is before the phylloxera epidemic.  Phylloxera essentially eradicated Mission from the Spanish mainland, though it did survive in the new world and in some of the Spanish islands.  It is very unlikely that Jaén Tinto was born in one of these places and taken back to Spain without being more widely cultivated in the place of its birth (and it is not cultivated in the new world or on the islands), so it must have been born on the Spanish mainland before the phylloxera epidemic, meaning that its parents must also have been present on the Spanish mainland at that time.

All of which is very interesting (I hope), but we're here to taste wine as well as find out interesting trivia about the grapes it is made from.  As mentioned above, I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2008 Bodegas Ortiz Señorío de Orán Pardina from Ralph's for about $12.  In the glass this wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly reserved with pear aromas and something vaguely cheesy and funky to it, but little else.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly low acidity.  There were flavors of white pear, ripe apple, and green melon with a twist of lemony citrus. There was also a touch of stony minerality on the finish, but overall this was pretty bland and subdued.  It's almost certainly a wine that should be enjoyed much younger than this but when Richard over at the Passionate Foodie tried this same wine in 2010, he didn't seem to find much more in it than I did.  There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but there isn't really much particularly right about it either.  It is at least relatively inexpensive, so adventurous tasters can sample it for themselves and make their own judgments.

CITATIONS

1) Zinelabidine, LH, Haddioui, A, Rodriguez, V, Cabello, F, Eiras-Dias, JE, Martinez Zapater, JM, & Ibanez, J.  2012.  Identification by SNP analysis of a major role for Cayetana Blanca in the genetic network of Iberian peninsula grapevine varieties.  American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.  63(1), pp 121-126.

The source for the identification of Pardina with Cayetana Blanco seems to be:

2) Asensio, ML, Valdez, E, & Cabello, F.  2002.  Characterisation of some Spanish white grapevine cultivars by morphology and amino acid analysis.  Scientia Horticulturae.  93, pp 289-299.

This study doesn't use DNA analysis, but rather uses ampelography and amino acid content of the various varieties to conclude that the two grapes are identical.  I don't know enough about this methodology to know how sound their conclusions are, but this was the only paper I could find that linked those two grapes together.  The OCW says in their entry on Cayetana that the research was done in the early 2000s, but the entry on Pardina says it was done in 2005.  Without a specific citation, it's very difficult to follow the line of their research, but I've done the best I could.

*There is actually a Spanish grape called Pardillo, but Pardina is not one of its synonyms.  There is also a grape known solely as Pardina, but it's an Italian grape that looks like it may be a table grape and is unrelated to what we're talking about here.  The bit of information about Pardillo sometimes being known as Pardina ultimately comes from Jancis Robinson's Guide to Wine Grapes entry on Pardillo (which was published in 1996).  I think its pretty clear that this Pardillo/Pardina is the same as Cayetana and is not meant to refer to this other Spanish Pardillo, but if you want to make a case for it, be my guest in the comments.

Sauvignon Gris, or why are some grapes pink? - Maipo Valley, Chile

A few days ago I wrote about the Tempranillo Blanco grape and the genetic underpinnings of white berry color in grapes.  In that post, we discovered that nearly all grapes are black in the wild and that while there are a series of genes that are responsible for creating and regulating the pigments (anthocyanins) in dark-berried grapes, a disruption in two of those genes (VvmybA1 and VvmybA2) is responsible for nearly all white-berried grapes that we enjoy today.  In short, a mobile genetic element (a retrotransposon called Gret1) jumped in front of the VvmybA1 gene hundreds of years ago and disrupted its function.  There was another mutation at some other point that also damaged the VvmybA2 gene, which created a recessive allele set with the potential to create white-berried vines.  A vine carrying this recessive allele was probably self-pollinated, and one or several of the seedlings carried both copies of the allele and a white berry was born.  It is estimated that 95% of white grapes today possess this mutation, which may indicate a common origin for all of them.  The story is more complicated (and interesting, I would argue) than the brief summary above, so I'd encourage you to read my prior article before continuing.

As you can see from the picture above, grapes don't just come in black/blue/purple and white/green.  There are also pink grapes, like Pinot Gris, Grenache Gris, Roditis and Gewürztraminer, to name a few.  Most of the pink-berried vines that we are familiar with are berry color mutations of other vine, meaning basically that the vines that have a pink-berried mutation are also often found in both white and dark-berried form as well.  Knowing how we can get from dark-berried vines to white-berries ones is interesting, but it doesn't really give us a lot of information on how pink-berried vines may come to be.  We know that if a vine has at least one working copy of the VvmybA1 gene, meaning even if it has one copy of the white-berried mutation, then the berries are dark but if it has two copies of the Gret1 insertion which deactivates VvmybA1, then the berries are white.  There doesn't seem to be any way to get to pink with this mechanism.

While this particular set of mutations isn't able to tell us why some berries are pink, it does at least give us a clue as to where we might look.  There are several VvmybA genes in sequence, and it is thought that these genes together are responsible for a lot of the anthocyanin regulation in grapes.  The Gret1 mutation effectively blocks all anthocyanin production not because VvmybA1 is the only gene responsible for grape skin coloration, but because it is the first gene in the sequence, and when you knock out the first gene in the sequence, the sequence never starts and anthocyanins are not produced at all.  Variations in VvmybA1 that do not completely shut the gene down and variations in the downstream genes are the most likely candidates to be responsible for berry color variation.  A study done in 2009 (citation 1) seems to indicate that this is true.  The statistical modeling in the study found that just a few differences in the genes VvmybA1, VvmybA2 and VvmybA3 accounted for 84% of the total variation in berry color.

Some of the mutations in this gene cluster are caused by the Gret1 mutation jumping back out of its spot in front of VvmybA1.  Remember that Gret1 is a mobile DNA element that is capable of jumping around in a genome, meaning it can not only jump into a spot, as it did to create this mutation, but it can jump out again as well.  Just as white-berried vines can suddenly appear in a vineyard planted to dark-berried vines, so can dark-berried vines show up in vineyards planted to white berried vines.  When the Gret1 jumps back out of its position in front of VvmybA1, it leaves a little bit of itself behind and while this little bit isn't enough to deactivate the VvmybA1 gene, it does sometimes inhibit it a little bit.

In 2009, a Japanese research team examined two red-berry sports of a normally white-berried grape called Italia (citation 2).  One of the grapes, Benitaka, was darker  and had more anthocyanins in its skin than the other, Ruby Okuyama.  The team found that in the lighter grape, Ruby Okuyama, the Gret1 transposon had hopped out and left a little bit of itself behind.  VvmybA1 functionality was restored, but in a limited capacity and Ruby Okuyama grapes are a light pink color as a result.  In the darker grape, Benitaka, the Gret1 transposon was actually still present, but it was farther away from the gene than in white-berried grapes.  What had happened was something called Double Strand Break Repair, which is a complicated process that I don't want to spend too much time on, but in brief, what happens is that a piece of DNA breaks off and is repaired by a another piece of DNA from the matching second chromosome set.  In this case, what happened was that part of the sequence between Gret1 and the VvmybA1 gene broke away on one chromosome and was repaired by a bit of DNA from between an area in front of VvmybA3 and into that gene from the other chromosome.  This "repair" essentially restored the gene's functionality and pushed Gret1 far enough away that it couldn't interfere in the gene stream anymore.

This is one explanation for pink-berried grapes, but it isn't the only one.  One of the more interesting explanations comes from a study done on Pinot Gris grapes (citation 3).  That study found that several Pinot Gris clones were actually chimeras.  Longtime readers of this site may remember a prior discussion of chimeras in the context of Pinot Meunier.  Essentially, a chimera is an organism which has cells with different DNA growing within it.  In nearly all organisms, every cell that the organism possesses has the same DNA.  Different genes are active in different cells, but the overall genotype is identical in every cell.  Chimeras have cells with different genotypes coexisting in the organism.

Here's how it happens.  The growth regions of plants, like buds and shoots, are called meristems and the meristem is divided into 3 cell layers.  The cells in the meristem are something like stem cells in human beings, in that they do not have any specific function while they are dividing, and become differentiated cells at a later point.  In a chimera, a cell in one of these layers undergoes some kind of mutation that makes its DNA different than the cells around it.  This mutated cell divides and becomes a part of the plant.  Chimeric mutations do not always lead to visible changes in the plant, but those that don't are typically not discovered. Chimeric mutations are not passed along to offspring, but they can be vegetatively propagated, or cloned, so chimeric mutations in grapes are passed along as cuttings from the vines are planted.  Those interested in reading more should check out this site, which is informative and fairly easy to understand.

In the study referenced above, the authors analyzed a few different clones of Pinot Gris and found that several (but not all) of them were chimeras.  They decided to self-pollinate two of these chimeric vines in order to see how the plant's DNA  was passed along to its offspring.  What they found was that the plants that grew from every single one of the seedlings had white berries instead of pink.  They also noticed that on some of the berry clusters from the original vines, there were berries that were half white and half pink!  It seems like what is happening is that Pinot Gris started out as Pinot Blanc and at some point, a chimeric mutation happened on the Pinot Blanc vine and the mutation had the allele to create red pigment.  Both cell types are in the berries with some of them creating unpigmented cells and others creating pigmented cells.  Together, these two cells create the appearance of pink or grey berries.  Chimerism doesn't explain all pink-berried vines, but it does seem to explain at least one mechanism for pink-berried vines that does not directly rely on the VvmybA gene group (though this group is indirectly involved via the unpigmented cells).

All of which, finally, brings us to Sauvignon Gris.  Sauvignon Gris is a pink-berried mutation of Sauvignon Blanc, though which mechanism discussed above is responsible for the pink skins is something I've not been able to figure out.  It is currently grown in Chile, Australia, New Zealand and France.  It is becoming more popular in Bordeaux in recent years and current plantings there stand at just over 330 hectares.  There is a story that the grape was virtually extinct until it was rediscovered in the 1980's by Jacky Prey in the Loire Valley, who calls it Fié Gris.  Fié is an old synonym for a particular clone of Sauvignon Blanc that was notoriously low-yielding and was thought to have been wiped out by phylloxera.  It's a nice story, but I'm not sure if I buy that Prey's discovery is the source for all of the Sauvignon Gris grown in the far corners of the world today, as it looks to me like the grape was sent to Chile and Australia before the 1980's.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2009 Cousino-Macul Sauvignon Gris from the Maipo Valley in Chile for around $12 from my friends at Bin Ends.  In the glass, the wine was a medium silvery lemon color.  The nose was fairly lackluster with some subtle white pear aromas and a faint whiff of peach of and grapefruit citrus.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly low acidity.  There were round white peach flavors along with some white grapefruit, grapefruit peel, and white pear.  The character of the wine was broad and fat, which surprised me given the acid levels in most Sauvignon Blanc based wines.  The finish was bitter, chalky and pithy and not really all that enjoyable. There were some similarities to Sauvignon Blanc in this wine, but not enough of them.  It's certainly possible that this wine may have been a little past peak, but I really expected it to still be showing decently since I don't think I've ever had a Sauvignon Blanc wine shut down after only 3 years in bottle.  I'm not ready to write the grape off after this experience, though, and if I come across a younger example or one from Bordeaux, I'll definitely post a note below.

Citations

1)  Fournier-Level, A, Le Cunff, L, Gomez, C, Doligez, A, Ageorges A, et al.  2009.  Quantitative genetic bases of anthocyanin variation in grape (Vitis vinifera L. ssp sativa) berry: A QTL to QTN integrated study. Genetics.  183, 1127-1139.

2) Azuma, A, Kobayashi, S, Goto-Yamamoto, N, Shiraishi, M, Mitani, N, Yakushiji, H, & Koshita, Y.  2009.  Color recovery in berries of grape (Vitis vinifera L.) 'Benitaka,' a bud sport of 'Italia,' is caused by a novel allele at the VvmybA1 locus.  Plant Science.  176, pp 470-478.

3) Hocquigny, S, Pelsy, F, Dumas, V, Kindt, S, Heloir, M-C, & Merdinoglu, D.  2004.  Diversification within grapevine cultivars goes through chimeric states.  Genome.  47, pp 579-589.

Tempranillo Blanco, or why are some grapes white? - Rioja, Spain

A few months ago, I wrote about a white wine that I tried made from red Tempranillo grapes.  I indicated in that post that I was hoping that the wine would be from a rare grape I had read about which was actually a white-berried mutation of red Tempranillo grapes, but alas, it was not.  A few weeks back, reader Tony tipped me off to an internet only special that the Pennsylvania state stores were running on a bottle that was actually made from 100% white Tempranillo grapes.  I was able to track the bottle down and try it recently, and that note is below.

While starting to research this wine, I found myself wondering just what might be going on in a grape that would cause a berry color mutation.  I knew that these mutations were more common in some grapes than in others, and I also knew that the DNA analyses being done for cultivar identification and pedigree reconstruction were unable to differentiate these mutations from their mother vines.  There was clearly something genetic going on, though, and I wondered if scientists had been able to figure out anything about the genetics of berry color.  I found the results of my research very interesting, and have tried to summarize what I learned in the paragraphs that follow.

While there are a large number of white and red/black berried Vitis vinifera grapes, it turns out that most wild grape types are almost always black.  Of the 30 Vitis species native to North America, only 3 have been reported to have any white-berried cultivars, and those 3 only have 1 white-berried vine each.  Before the advent of modern DNA analysis, scientists were studying genetics by observing traits in various plants and animals and seeing how those traits were passed along to offspring.  As early as 1915, UP Hedrick and RD Anthony were able to show that the white berry color was a recessive trait.  For those not up on their high school biology, remember that grapevines (and people) have two sets of DNA encoded on two sets of chromosomes (one from each parent).  For a dominant trait, only one set of chromosomes needs to have the gene for that particular trait in order for it to be expressed.  For a recessive trait, both sets of chromosomes must have the gene for that trait in order to be expressed.  If a vine has one gene for red or black berries and the other gene is for white berries, then the berries on that vine will be red or black.  Only if a vine has two genes for white berries will white berries result.  Crossing two white berried vines will always create a new white berried vine, but crossing two red berried vines may still produce a white berried vine 25% of the time if both original vines carried the recessive gene for white berries.

It would be wonderful if it turned out that there was a single gene responsible for berry color, but as with many issues in genetics, the real story is a little more complicated than that.  It turns out that color in grapevines comes from compounds known as anthocyanins which are blue or purple pigments that color nearly all blue or purple plants from eggplants to violets.  There are many different genes that regulate anthocyanin production, but it turns out that one (or possibly two) of them is much more important than the others.  In 2005, a Japanese research team (citation 1) discovered a retrotransposon, which they named Gret1, which seemed to contribute to white berried mutations of grapes.  A retrotransposon is a special class of transposon, which is just a segment of DNA that is able to move around within a genome, meaning basically that they are able to kind of cut themselves out of a particular segment of DNA and insert themselves somewhere else.  Retrotransposons encode onto RNA which then moves around and is reverse-transcribed into another part of the genome.

Retrotransposons are fairly common in the genomes of most living things, but for the most part, they move around in areas of "junk DNA" and don't cause any trouble.  When one lands in or near a gene, though, it can disrupt that gene's function and lead to a mutant.  What the Japanese team found was that when Gret1 jumped in front of a particular gene (with the catchy name VvmybA1) responsible for anthocyanin regulation on both sets of chromosomes, the result was a white-berried vine.  What scientists think is happening is that VvmybA1 is part of a sequence of genes that together regulate anthocyanin production in grapes.  When this first gene is disrupted, the whole sequence is shut down and anthocyanins aren't produced.  There is some evidence that disruptions to the next gene in the sequence, VvmybA2, also lead to white berry production (see note at bottom*).  The entire sequence is not fully understood at this time, but it looks like disruptions to these two genes may be responsible for approximately 95% of all white berried vines on earth.

The Japanese team looked at only a small number of grapes for their studies, but in 2007, a much larger study (citation 2) was done on a larger range of grapes (over 200) to see whether Gret1's involvement in berry fruit color could be determined.  They looked at 84 white berried vines and 117 pigmented berried vines and found that the Gret1 sequence was in both chromosome sets in 81 of the 84 white vines, while all 117 of the pigmented berries had at least one complete copy of the VvmybA1 gene without the Gret1 mutation.  The results clearly indicate that there's a very high degree of correlation between the presence of Gret1 in the VvmybA1 gene, but the presence of white-berried vines that do not show this particular mutation indicate that there are likely other mechanisms for the creation of white-berried vines as well.

The research team also performed a DNA sequence analysis on all of the vines present, and what they found was that there was actually very little diversity between all of the white berried vines in the study.  Furthermore, even the sequences of the red-berried vines that had one copy of the mutated gene tended to be very similar to one another and to the white-berried vines.  The team has hypothesized that a single jump of the Gret1 retrotransposon into the VvmybA1 gene happened a very long time ago and created a white berried vine.  Since the Gret1 mutation is found in essentially the same location for all white-berried vines, this mutation probably happened on a single chromosome in a red-berried vine.  This vine was probably self-fertilized at some point, and when the seeds were planted, about 1/4 of them turned into vines with white berries.  One or several of these vines are probably the distant ancestor(s) of many of the white grape vines that we enjoy today.

All of which brings us to Tempranillo Blanco.  Remember from our investigation into the Albillo grape that Tempranillo's parents were Albillo Mayor and Benedicto.  Albillo Mayor is a white-berried grape, and it is likely that it carries this particular mutation.  When crossed with Benedicto, a red-berried grape, the offspring would also be red-berried, but it would carry one copy of the recessive white allele.  It is possible that at some point, the non-mutated allele (the red-berried one) itself either went through the mutation above or had some other kind of mutation to the VvmybA1 gene that caused it to be non-functional.  The result would be a white-berried vine.  It has been demonstrated in Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon that white berried-mutations are the result of a complete deletion of the previously functional VvmybA1 gene, which means that the mutated tissue now has one copy of the mutation and nothing on its other chromosome, which results in white berries (citation 3 and 4).  It is unclear whether this is the mechanism that occurs for all white-berried sport mutations, though.

As far as I know, no one has analyzed Tempranillo Blanco's genome in order to see exactly what kind of mutation occurred (**UPDATE** I'm kind of wrong here...I have found a paper that shows that Tempranillo Blanco has at least one copy of the mutant VvmybA1 gene [with the Gret1 insertion], which isn't surprising since Tempranillo does as well, but the paper doesn't offer an explanation as to what might have happened to the functional VvmybA1 gene to cause the color mutation).  I've seen references to a DNA test that was done in order to verify that it was in fact Tempranillo, but I can't find the source for that info.  What we do know is that in 1988, a grower in Rioja noticed that one of his Tempranillo vines was suddenly producing green berries (green = white in viticultural terms).  The local authorities took some cuttings and propagated them to see if the vine was suitable for planting in the area.  The early results were encouraging, and a few wineries were allowed to cultivate the grape on an experimental basis.  In 2007, Tempranillo Blanco was officially permitted in DOC wines from Rioja.

I special ordered the 2009 Ad Libitum 100% Tempranillo Blanco from the Pennsylvania state store website.  Retail on the bottle was $15 and shipping was around $7 (they do not ship out of state, but my in-laws live around Pittsburgh and were able to pick the bottle up for me).  In the glass the wine was a medium silvery lemon color with greenish tints.  The nose was fairly intense with pear, beeswax, mint and asparagus aromas.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of pear, cooked asparagus, Meyer lemon, eucalyptus and beeswax.  It had a very vegetal kind of flavor profile overall that was really odd.  It picks up a bit of tartness as it approaches room temperature, but never really shakes off the stewed vegetable character.  I don't see this grape taking over the vineyards of Rioja any time soon, especially since the Consejo Regulador of the Rioja region has specified that vineyards must pull up a previously growing vine in order to plant Tempranillo Blanco in their vineyards.  I'd like to get my hands on a fresher example to see if perhaps age played a part in my disliking this wine, but as you might imagine, Tempranillo Blanco based wines are pretty difficult to find. 

REFERENCES

1) Kobayashi, S, Goto-Yamamoto, N, Hirochika, H.  (2004)  Retrotransposon-induced mutations in grape skin color.  Science.  304, pp 982.

2)  This, P, Lacome, T, Cadle-Davidson, M, Owens, CL.  (2007)  Wine grape (Vitis vinifera L.) color associates with allelic variation in the domestication gene VvmybA1.  Theoretical and Applied Genetics.  114, pp 723-730.

3) Yakushiji, H, Kobayashi, S, Goto-Yamamoto, N, Jeong, ST, Sueta, T, Mitani, N, Azuma, A.  2006.  A skin color mutation of grapevine, from black-skinned Pinot Noir to white-skinned Pinot Blanc is caused by the deletion of the functional VvmybA1 allele.  Bioscience, Biotechnology and Biochemistry.  70(6), pp 1506-1508.

4) Walker, AR, Lee, E, Robinson, SP.  Two new grape cultivars, bud sports of Cabernet Sauvignon bearing pale-coloured berries, are the result of deletion of two regulatory genes of the berry colour locus.  Plant Molecular Biology.  62(4-5), 623-645.

also consulted:

Cadle-Davidson, M, Owens, CL.  (2008)  Genomic amplification of the Gret1 retroelement in white-fruited accessions of wild Vitis and interspecific hybrids.  Thoretical and Applied Genetics.  116, pp 1079-1094.

**I've recently come across a more recent paper that shows that locates a specific mutation in VvmybA2 that is present in all white cultivars that also have the Gret1 transposon mutation in front of VvmybA1.  The VvmybA2 mutation occurs in two places within the gene.  The first mutation alters the production of an amino acid (the gene produces leucine here in the non-mutated version and arginine in the mutated one), while the second mutation is a deletion of a dinucleotide, which causes the gene to terminate early.  It looks like these mutations on VvmybA1 and VvmybA2 are typically found together in most of the white-berried grape cultivars studied.

Walker, AR, Lee, E, Bogs, J, McDavid, DAJ, Thomas, MR, & Robinson, SP.  2007.  White grapes arose through the mutation of two similar and adjacent regulatory genes.  The Plant Journal.  49, pp 772-785.