Spergola - Emilia-Romagna, Italy

If you only looked up the Spergola grape in the Oxford Companion to Wine, you might think it was a little disingenuous to include it on a site focusing on unusual wines.  The OCW entry for Spergola reads in full: "occasional name for Sauvignon Blanc in the Emilia region of Italy."  The online version of the OCW is generally kept pretty up-to-date with the latest information on grape synonymies, homonymies and relations, especially since they've been working so hard on their upcoming book all about wine grapes, which is due out late next month, so you might be inclined to take their word for it regarding Spergola and move along.  If you've followed this blog at all over the past year or so, though, you know that that's not how I do things around here.  I don't care who says it, I don't ever believe that something is true unless I can at least find corroboration from other sources or, preferably (where applicable), scientific evidence that clearly demonstrates the truth or falsity of a given claim.

My search for the truth about Spergola led me in a few different directions.  Tar and Roses has an entry on Spergola with some interesting historical information, such as the fact that the first mention of Spergola can be traced back to the 15th Century.  Their take on Spergola's relationship to Sauvignon Blanc is the same as the OCW, though, which was not an encouraging start.  On the other hand, the VIVC has a stand-alone entry for Spergola, which is usually a solid indication that it is a separate cultivar (if it was just another name for Sauvignon Blanc, searching for Spergola would lead you to the SB entry and Spergola would merely be listed in the accepted synonyms section).  Finally, the importer's website (the indomitable Louis/Dressner), in their section on the winery who made the bottle I'll be taking a look at below, says "for many years [Spergola] was considered a type of Sauvignon, but has now been genetically proven to be a grape variety of its own."

While I don't ever just accept the phrase "genetically proven" or "DNA studies have shown," seeing that phrase at least lets me know that someone has done the work and all I need to do is track it down.  For those interested, the two best ways that I've found to try and find academic papers published about wine are Google Scholar and the Vitis-Vea database.  A simple search for "spergola" in the Vitis-Vea database yielded only three results, but the title of the second result ("Morphological and genetic characterisation of the white grape cvs Spergola, Sauvignon and Sémillon") immediately told me that I'd found what I was looking for.  The problem was that the Vitis-Vea database doesn't have PDF copies of all of the papers they have abstracts for and since the university I work for (in an administrative and not an academic capacity) isn't primarily an agricultural school, it can be difficult to actually get my hands on some of these papers.  To compound matters, this particular paper was published in an Italian journal and was likely also written in Italian, so even if I could get the article, I probably wouldn't be able to understand it.

Fortunately, nearly every journal offers the abstracts of their papers for free, and for this particular paper, the abstract was not only very comprehensive, but it was also written in English.  Those interested can read the full abstract here, but in brief, the researchers decided to test whether Spergola and Sauvignon Blanc were the same grape.  Spergola is also known as Spergolina Verde in some places, and some believed that it could be the same as Sémillon, so the scientists tested that as well.  Their ampelographical and their genetic tests were all unequivocal and demonstrated conclusively that Spergola, Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon were all separate, genetically distinct grape varieties.  They advise that "the name Spergola should be stricken from the list of the Sauvignon synonyms recognised in the National Catalogue of Grape Varieties and registered therein as a variety in its own right. It should, at the same time, be listed among the recommended varieties in the Reggio Emilia province areas, with the consequent changes in the CDO labelling for Colli di Scandiano e di Canossa white wine, in which at present it is indicated as a synonym for Sauvignon and Spergola."

This paper was published in 2001, and as far as I can tell, there hasn't been any further work to disprove the findings, so it seems like it's pretty safe to say that Spergola is definitely different from Sauvignon Blanc.  It seems to be grown almost exclusively in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, where its naturally high acidity means that it is usually made into a sparkling wine of some sort.  Some sources also indicate that Spergola is sometimes used in the production of Balsamic Vinegar, but the Consorzio Produttori Antiche Acetaie says that for traditional Balsamic Vinegar, "the grapes harvested must be those 'used for the wine traditionally cultivated in the province of Modena,' and in particular from Lambrusco and Trebbiano grapes." It's not inconceivable that some Spergola may find its way into some form of Balsamic Vinegar somewhere, but if you're interested in tasting what the Spergola grape is all about, Balsamic Vinegar is probably not your best bet (delicious as it may be).

I was able to try a bottle of the 2007 Ca de Noci "Querciole," which I picked up from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $35.  This wine is 100% Spergola that undergoes a natural re-fermentation in the bottle to give it a little bit of fizz (the same winery also makes a traditional method sparkler from Spergola that I have not had the chance to try).  It's also unfiltered, so there are almost certainly going to be some little floaty things in your bottle and possibly your glass if you don't pour carefully.  In the glass this wine was a medium bronze color with steady bubbles.  The nose was fairly intense with yeasty bread dough, ripe apple and toasted nut aromas.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity. It was lightly fizzy and really heavy on secondary fermentation and oxidative characteristics.  There was some ripe apple and apple skin fruits along with a bit of apple cider, but it was mostly nutty, dusty and yeasty.  It looked and drank more like beer than wine, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preferences, I suppose.  Button-down Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio lovers will probably want to give this wine a wide berth, but adventurous wine drinkers will certainly find a lot to intrigue and provoke here.

Verdelho - Madeira, Portugal; Canary Islands, Spain & California, USA

Several months ago, I wrote a post about the Sercial grape, in which I indicated that  I was planning a series of posts that would deal with the major grapes used in the production of Madeira.  That project is taking longer than I would have liked, but today I'd like to continue it with a look at another of the "classic" Madeira grapes, Verdelho.  In my Sercial post, I briefly outlined the history of Madeira wine, and readers interested in that topic are advised to read through that post, as today I'm more interested in taking a look at what makes Madeira different from other wines, and to do that we need to take a closer look at how it is made.

Before it was the name of a wine, Madeira was the name of a place, namely an island group about 600 miles west of Portugal.  It was one of the last stops for European ships on their way to the Americas, and many of them stocked up on the wines of the islands before setting off on their journeys.  In the early days, the wines made on the Madeira Islands were ordinary table wines, but it was found that they spoiled very quickly on board the ships, as they were stored in large barrels and exposed to the elements, particularly the sun, which deteriorated them rapidly.  Eventually it was found that adding brandy to the wines helped them last longer while on board traveling ships, but even these fortified wines eventually cooked in the merciless sun in the middle of the ocean.  While the resulting product was very different from everyday wine, it was found that it picked up some new and interesting flavors not found in any other wines, and many people began to develop a taste for it.  In particular, the US Colonies were very fond of these wines from Madeira and became a large export market for them.

Up until the early 20th Century, some Madeira houses still put barrels of wine on ships in order to properly age them, but virtually no one does that anymore.  Today, there are basically two different methods used to properly age Madeira: estafugem and canteiro.  Estafugem is the quick and dirty method where the wine is placed in large stainless steel vats that are heated either via a hot water jacket on the outside of the tank or by immersing a heating coil in the wine itself.  The vats are sealed, but not filled to capacity and are usually agitated in some way to aid oxidation as well.  The heat is applied for about three months before being bottled.  This method is fast and cheap and is used for the production of low-quality Madeiras, as the secondary flavor characteristics prized by Madeira enthusiasts are at best only hinted at using this method.

The canteiro method is the one preferred for the production of higher quality Madeiras, especially for vintage or varietal Madeiras.  Here, the wines are placed in wooden casks that can vary from 300 to 2500 litres, and the casks are placed in a warm place.  Many lodges place them in lofts or in areas as high as possible (since heat rises, after all), though others just place them outside in the sun.  The casks are typically left alone for at least two years, and the wines made in the canteiro style cannot be sold until at least three years from the January 1st following the harvest.  The casks are not topped up, and most barrels lose about 5% of their liquid each year due to evaporation.  Basic Madeiras sold with the name of one of the four "noble" Madeira grapes, Sercial, Bual, Verdelho or Malmsey, usually go through this process, while vintage Madeiras are typically aged for much, much longer.

As mentioned above, Verdelho is one of the four noble Madeira grapes.  Each of the four noble grapes maps roughly on to a particular style of Madeira with Sercial being the driest, Verdelho the next driest, Bual a little sweeter and Malmsey the sweetest.  The Verdelho of Madeira is not the same as the Verdelho of mainland Portugal, which is now known as Gouveio (or Godello, in Spain).  The Madeira Verdelho is also widely grown in the Azores, and it is thought that vines from the Azores were brought to Australia in the 19th Century.  Verdelho is still relatively widely planted throughout Australia, to the extent that the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show does not consider Verdelho to be an alternative variety and will not consider entries made from it.  I must admit that I came across more examples of wine made from the Verdelho grape than I had anticipated, but in the end decided it was still unusual enough to merit inclusion here.

The first wine that I tried was the 2005 Twisted Oak Verdelho made from grapes grown in the Silvaspoons Vineyard in Lodi, California, which I picked up from my friends over at the Gypsy Kitchen for about $16.  As mentioned in my recent post on Torrontés, the Silvaspoons Vineyard is owned and maintained by Ron Silva, who primarily grows Portuguese grape varieties there.  In the glass, this wine was a light silvery lemon color with greenish tints. The nose was fairly reserved with some green apple and lemon-lime citrus fruits along with some slighly oaky and buttery aromas as well.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly low acidity.  There were flavors of vanilla, ripe pear, buttery pie dough, ripe apple, coconut and pineapple candy.  I had half expected that the wine would be shot as it was 7 years old when I tried it, but it was drinking very well.  It's not really my style of wine, though, as the low acid and prominent oak are a deadly combination for my taste buds.  Fans of moderately oaked California Chardonnay will find a lot to like here, though, especially for the money.

The next wine that I tried was the 2007 Bodegas Viñátigo Verdello from the Ycoden Daute Isadora region on the western tip of the Tenerife island in the Canary Island chain.  I picked this wine up for around $32 from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep bronze-gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with leesy aromas of red apple, pear and honey with a little nuttiness and a little cheesy funk as well.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of toasted almonds and sawdust along with some honey, red apple, dried apple, dried apricot and baking spice.  This is a wine that really needs to be served as close to room temperature as you can manage, as it is harsh and spare when chilled too much.  As it warms up, though, the spice and dried fruits really become more apparent and the wine becomes much more generous and appealing.  It's not a cheap wine, but it is both good and interesting, which are the two major requirements I have for wines in this price range.

The final wine that I tried was the NV Vinhos Barbeito "Savannah Verdelho" from their Historic Series, which set me back about $40.  As a proud Georgia native, I was gratified to learn about the strong history of Madeira in the city of Savannah.  In addition to being a major port city for the import of Madeira wine in the early days of America, the city was (and I believe still is) the home to the Madeira Club of Savannah, a group of Madeira enthusiasts who gather monthly to drink fine old Madeiras, dine together and discuss issues of the day.  While this wine probably wouldn't be served at one of their functions, I found it plenty enjoyable.  In the glass the wine was a dark, deep tawny-brown color.  The nose was very intense with powerful roasted nut and burnt sugar aromas.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with high acid and medium sweetness.  There were zippy flavors of green apple, tasted walnuts and pecans, burnt sugar and smoke along with a slight salinity as well.  This wine was exceptionally balanced with an electric vein of acidity that really supported the sugar and nutty fruits.  This would be amazing with nutty desserts like pecan pie or baklava, but would also be nice with salty, funky cheeses as well.

Much of the discussion about the methods of producing Madeira wine is adapted from Trevor Elliott's The Wines of Madeira, which interested readers can order here.

Perricone - Sicily, Italy

When you think about red wines from Sicily, at least one grape probably springs immediately to mind.  Nero d'Avola has become the signature grape of the island, and it is difficult to walk into a wine store anywhere and not be able to find at least one on the shelves.  Sicily has a host of other interesting red grapes, though, and we've covered a few of them here recently.  Nerello Mascalese is starting to show up more and more in many wine shops, as is Frappato, which is undoubtedly one of my favorite grapes.  Today I'd like to take a look at an even lesser known Sicilian grape called Perricone (which is sometimes called Pignatello, though it is not related to Pugnitello, Pignoletto, or Pignolo as far as I know).

When I started to research the Perricone grape, it initially looked like perhaps it wouldn't be suitable for inclusion on this site after all.  Searching for Perricone on Wikipedia initially directed me to a page for a Dr. Nicholas Perricone, but below the header for that article it says "for the wine grape that is also known as Perricone, see Barbera," which, to me at least, is certainly not Fringe Wine grape.  I was surprised, but went to the article on Barbera where I read "in Sicily, the grape [Barbera] is used in various blends under the names Perricone or Pignatello."  The source for this bit of information was the Oxford Companion to Wine, and in its entry for Barbera, the OCW says "in Sicilia some argue that the local Perricone, or Pignatello, is Barbera."  The OCW also has an entry on Perricone, though, which reads in full: "Sicilian red grape variety planted on hardly more than 1,000 ha/2,500 acres of the island.  Soft varietal wines are sometimes called by its synonym Pignatello."  No mention is made of a possible relationship to Barbera, so I decided to expand the search and see if there was anything more substantial that could prove or disprove a connection between the two grapes.

The VIVC cultivar name database has separate listings for Barbera and Perricone, which means that they are considered separate cultivars by the database.  The VIVC microsatellite database had an entry for Barbera, but not for Perricone, so I set out to try to find a DNA profile of Perricone to compare to the VIVC profile for Barbera.  The first paper that I found (citation 1 below) evaluated 82 different Sicilian grapes and published the microsatellite profile for each.  When I checked this against the Barbera entry in the VIVC, it was clear that they didn't match.  This was encouraging, but I felt like I needed a little more before I could feel confident that the two grapes were not identical and, furthermore, not related.

The VIVC's entry on Perricone indicates that one of its parents is Sangiovese.  The bibliographic entry for this bit of information led me to a second paper (citation 2 below), which I had actually read before while I was doing research for my post on Ciliegiolo.  In this paper, the authors provide microsatellite data that was consistent with what was in the first paper, and which also didn't match Barbera.  Further, the authors were able to show that Perricone is likely an offspring of Sangiovese, though the other parent is unknown.  Barbera is definitely not an offspring of Sangiovese, and if you don't want to take my word for it, you can plug each grape into the VIVC microsatellite database and see in the results (the fact that they don't match at either site on VVMD7 & VrZAG62 proves there is no parent/offspring relationship).  All of this information together means that Perricone and Barbera are definitely two different cultivars.

Now that we know what Perricone isn't, let's see if we can learn a little bit about what it is.  The phrase "blending grape" pops up a lot in descriptions of Perricone as its deep color, full body and tannic structure make it suitable for blending with lighter Sicilian grapes.  Nicolas Belfrage, in his Brunello to Zibibbo says that it was more widely spread throughout Sicily as recently as 100 years ago, but plantings have fallen over the past century as plantings of Nero d'Avola have risen since the grapes share many of the same oenological qualities, but Nero d'Avola is considered superior to Perricone in the quality of the wines it makes.  There are a couple of DOCs (namely Eloro and Contea di Sclafani) that permit the inclusion of Perricone and which also allow for varietal wines to be made from it, but the two wines that I was able to find were both IGT.

The first wine that I tried was the 2010 Feudo Montoni "Colle del Mandorlo," which I picked up for about $11 from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep purple-ruby color.  The nose was fairly intense with smoky black cherry and black raspberry fruit along with some savory charcoal and meat aromas.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity and medium tannins.  There were flavors of black cherry, blackberry and raspberry fruit as well as some smoky leather and charred meat.  There was something a little bit like burnt rubber on the finish, but it wasn't prominent enough to throw the wine off.  Overall I thought this wine was juicy, fruity and savory and actually reminded me quite a bit of Nero d'Avola or Syrah.  I thought it was a very nice value at only $11 and imagine that it would be a great match for pretty much any grilled red meat, though it is definitely soft and friendly enough to drink on its own.

The second wine that I tried was the 2007 Caruso Minini "Sachia" Perricone, which I picked up from Winestone for around $25.  In the glass this wine was also a fairly deep purple-ruby color.  The nose was moderately intense with smoke, black cherry, black plum, charred wood and dried fruit aromas.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity and fairly low tannins. There were big, gushing fruit flavors of black cherry, blackberry and dried blueberry fruit backed by smoke and char.  This was a much bigger and denser wine than the Montoni, loaded with rich, dark black fruits.  Again I was reminded of Nero d'Avola while drinking this wine, but the similarity to Syrah was much stronger here than in the Montoni.  Fans of rich, generous, hot weather Syrah-based wines will find a lot to like in this particular bottling.  Is it worth the extra money?  Well, it probably depends on what the occasion is and what you like to drink.  $25 seems like a fair price to me for what you get with this wine, but bargain hunters may be more comfortable with the $11 wine.  It would be difficult to go wrong with either choice, though, as both are very good.

Citations

1)  Carini, 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, pp. 703-719.

2)  Di Vecchi Staraz, M., Bandinelli, R., Boselli, M., This, P., Boursiquot, J.M., Laucou, V., Lacombe, T., & Vares, D.  2007.  Genetic structuring and parentage analysis for evolutionary studies in grapevine: kin group and origin of the cultivar Sangiovese revealed.  Journal of the American Society of Horticultural Science, 132(4), pp. 514-524.

Torrontés - Silvaspoons Vineyard, Alta Mesa, California

On this day two years ago, I decided to start this wine blog.  Throughout the two years that I've been drinking, researching and writing about unusual grapes and wines, I've learned an amazing amount and met some really nice and interesting people.  I've been humbled that people choose to read and respond to the stuff that I write here, and I've really tried to make the content on this site worthy of other people's time and attention.  The very first grape that I wrote about on this blog was Torrontés, and I wrote that post after quickly scanning the Wikipedia entry on the grape, and then banged out a few tasting notes from memory.  It's the worst researched and probably the worst written post on the site, but I can't bring myself to take it down.  I've wanted to re-write several of those early posts, but have had so many new wines to write about, that I just haven't had the chance.  Today I'd like to rectify that and am going to write a new Torrontés post from scratch, taking a look at a very interesting California Torrontés in the process.

Torrontés is the most widely planted white grape in Argentina as of 2008 and has become a bit of a minor phenomenon on the US marketplace.  It is certainly not as easy to find as Malbec, but chances are good that if your local wine shop has a white wine from Argentina, it's probably a Torrontés.  But which Torrontés?  It turns out that there are three different Torrontés cultivars grown in Argentina: Torrontés Riojano, Torrontés Sanjuanino and Torrontés Mendocino.  Each is named for a different province of Argentina, with Riojano corresponding to La Rioja (and not the Rioja in Spain), Sanjuanino corresponding to San Juan and Mendocino corresponding to Mendoza (and not the county in California).  There are also a few grapes grown in Spain with Torrontes as a synonym (most notably Albillo Mayor and the Terrantez grape of Madeira), but these Spanish Torrontes grapes are not related to the Argentine grapes.

Torrontés Riojano is the most important cultivar commercially, and, for the most part, when you buy a bottle of Argentine Torrontés this is the grape that's in your glass.  Torrontés Sanjuanino has many of the same aromatic qualities that make Torrontés Riojano so popular, but it produces lower yields than Torrontés Riojano, so growers aren't as keen to plant it.  Torrontés Mendocino lacks the explosive aroma profile of the other two Torrontés cultivars and is only really cultivated in southern Argentina, when it is grown at all.  Torrontés Riojano and Torrontés Sanjuanino are also grown to some extent in Chile where they are known as Torentel and Moscatel de Austria respectively.  At this point, you may be wondering exactly what the relationship between these three grapes actually is.  Are they different clones of a single grape or are they different grapes?  And if they're different grapes, are they actually related to one another or are the names misleading?

In 2003, two teams of scientists from Argentina and from UC Davis in California set out to discover the relationships between these three grapes (citation 1 below).  They found that each had a genetically distinct DNA profile, and were thus separate cultivars.  They also found that Torrontés Riojano and Torrontés Sanjuanino are full siblings and that both resulted from a cross between Muscat of Alexandria and Criolla Chica, which is actually the same grape as the Mission grape of California, or the Listan Negro grape of the Canary Islands (they also found a few other grapes whose parents are Muscat of Alexandria and Criolla Chica, but those grapes aren't really important here).  Torrontés Mendocino is a half-sibling of the other two Torrontés cultivars, as it has Muscat of Alexandria as one parent, but its other parent is unknown.  The authors believe that the crossings that created each of the Torrontés cultivars probably happened in South America, since there is no European grape that is a genetic match to any of them.

Torrontés is grown virtually nowhere outside of South America, but apparently grape grower Ron Silva, who usually specializes in Portuguese grapes, has planted some Torrontés in his Silvaspoons Vineyard in the Alta Mesa region of Lodi, California.  Silva mostly sells the grapes he grows to California wineries, and one of his customers is Matthew Rorick of Forlorn Hope Wines.  Forlorn Hope makes wines from a host of unusual grape varieties and is committed to minimal intervention in the winery.  Rorick uses only natural yeasts and older, neutral barrels in the winery, and if the Torrontés that I tried from him is any indication, he's not that into filtering his wines either (which is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned).

I was able to find a bottle of the 2009 Forlorn Hope "La Gitana" Torrontés from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for around $28.  In the glass this wine was a medium lemon gold color and was a little hazy.  On the nose the wine was fairly intense with aromas of honeysuckle flower, peach, pineapple, tea leaves and lime.  The perfume was gorgeous and heady and almost a shame to drink.  On the palate the wine was medium body with fairly low acid.  There were flavors of waxy pear, honeysuckle flower, peach skin, orange blossom and beeswax.  The wine was delicate and subtle, but also incredibly complex.  This wine only needs a slight chill, if you want to chill it at all, as it shuts down at very cold temperatures, but when it's in the zone, it's an amazing, beautiful wine.  Many of the Torrontés based wines from Argentina can be very short or bitter on the palate and though they are almost all very perfumy and aromatic, I find that most of them end up disappointing me when I go to actually drink them.  This wine, though, is amazing the whole way through and is easily the best Torrontés-based wine that I've ever had.  Yes, it is going to run you more than the Argentine versions, but it's worth every penny.  Production is very limited on most of the Forlorn Hope wines, but if you happen to run across this, do not hesitate to pull the trigger.

CITATION

1) Aguero, CB, Rodriguez, JG, Martinez, LE, Dangl, GS, & Meredity, CP.  2003.  Identity and parentage of Torrontés cultivars in Argentina.  American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 54(4), pp 318-321.

Albarín Blanco - Tierra de Leon, Spain

A few months ago, reader Tony sent me an email asking if I'd ever had a wine made from the Albarín Blanco grape, and, furthermore, whether I knew if Albarín Blanco was the same grape as the much more well known Albariño.  His cursory research into the matter was inconclusive as some sources indicate that the grapes are identical to one another while others assert that they are separate varieties.  I'm always up for a challenge, so I decided to look into the matter a little bit to see what I could find.  I had always heard that the two grapes were identical, but I had never really investigated the matter in depth.

My first two lines of research are always Wikipedia and the Oxford Companion to Wine.  The latter source has no entry on Albarín Blanco while the former redirects you to the entry on Albariño.  This was interesting, but hardly conclusive, so next I checked out the VIVC database where I was surprised to find that there were separate entries for Albariño and Albarín Blanco, which is usually a solid indication that the grapes are indeed distinct from one another.  Given the conflict between the sources I had consulted to that point, I decided to check a few abstract databases to see if there were any studies published that looked at both Albarín Blanco and Albariño.

To my surprise, I was able to find quite a few different papers with DNA profiles for both grapes.  The first paper that I read (citation 1 below) was actually an ampelographical study which looked at the physical characteristics of a number of different vines in northwest Spain and concluded that the two vines looked different enough to be considered separate varieties.  The authors also examined the claim that Albarín Blanco was the same as the Albillo grape and were able to determine that they were separate grapes as well.  Ampelographical evidence is nice to have, but it's not really considered definitive in today's world of DNA analysis, so I moved on to the next paper (citation 2 below), which analyzed the DNA of a number of different grapes in northwestern Spain at 10 different microsatellite sites.  The results clearly showed that the two grapes were separate cultivars with distinct DNA profiles.  Somewhat tantalizingly, though, the profiles matched at one allele on 9 of the 10 sites analyzed, which may suggest some kind of relationship between the two grapes, though not a parent/offspring relationship.

Satisfied, I sent my findings back to Tony, who was excited by the answers that I found.  Tony had already tried a wine made from the grape and had found a lot of Sauvignon Blanc characteristics in it, so he decided to check the VIVC microsatellite database to see whether those two grapes might be related.  While there were a number of similarities, the data at the VIVC definitely indicated that there was no parent/offspring relationship between Sauvignon Blanc and Albarín Blanco.  Tony also decided to check Albarín Blanco against Savagnin, though, and, surprisingly, the two grapes matched one another at one allele on all six sites that the VIVC tracks.  This is suggestive of a parent/offspring relationship, but as we've mentioned here before, you need way more than six sites to determine those kinds of relationships, so I fired up the old search engines again and tried to find studies that might be able to link Savagnin with Albarín Blanco.

My search led me to a paper (citation 3 below) written by a Spanish research team who happened to notice that two sample vines (accessions) in the collection of the Mision Biologica de Galicia, which were both labeled as Albarín Blanco, actually looked very different from one another.  They suspected that these were two distinct vines, so they analyzed each of them.  They also analyzed a handful of other accessions that looked very similar to one of the Albarín Blanco vines (Albarín Blanc I) to see whether they were related as well.  What they found was that not only was the Albarín Blanco I vine distinct from the Albarín Blanco II vine, but the Albarín Blanco II vine was actually Savagnin!

The authors believe that Savagnin may have been brought into Spain in the late 19th Century by French wine technicians from Bordeaux.  These technicians came to show the locals how to graft vines onto native American rootstocks in order to thwart the phylloxera louse that had recently ravaged the vineyards of Europe.  They brought several different French vines with them, and it is thought that Savagnin could have been one of those vines.  Both Albarín Blanco and Savagnin share some physiological characteristics and both ripen early, so it is possible that growers confused the two vines and have just been calling both by the same name for years.  Coincidentally, it also turns out that much of what was grown in Australia as Albariño was later found to be Savagnin as well.  I can't find any evidence that the cases of mistaken identity have a common root cause, but the mind certainly swims with possibilities.

There was also a study published in 2003 (citation 4 below) that found that Albarín Blanco and Savagnin were identical.  The samples for this particular study both came from the El Encín in Madrid.  Readers with good memories may recall that an accession at the Encín was the result of all of the confusion surrounding Hondarrabi Zuri, as a sample mislabeled as Hondarrabi Zuri was actually an American hybrid grape called Noah.  The authors of the paper on Albarín Blanco and Savagnin say that while many of the vines at the Encín were collected by grapevine experts, towards the second half of the 20th Century, the institute began requesting vines from the Agricultural Authority of each province, rather than sending an expert into the fields to collect them.  In many cases, then, the person who was collecting the requested vine was not an expert, and it is thought that this led to many errors in naming in this collection.

All of which is interesting, but the original question that I had was whether Savagnin could possibly be a parent to Albarín Blanco.  I emailed the corresponding author on paper #3, but have not received any response.  I've also been unable to find anything definitive in the literature.  The closest thing I've found was a paper (citation 5 below) that analyzed 56 different grape varieties grown in the northwestern area of the Iberian peninsula, including both Albarín Blanco and Savagnin.  The study wasn't designed to check for parent/offspring relationships, but the authors do mention a few possible relationships between some of the grapes that they analyzed given the data that they acquired, but a possible relationship between Albarín Blanco and Savagnin is not mentioned.  This is merely suggestive evidence, but it makes me think that the two grapes probably aren't related.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2011 Villacezan "Elverite" Albarín Blanco from a store in the Pittsburgh, PA, area for about $9.  The wine is from the Tierra de Leon DO in northwestern Spain (map).  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color with greenish tints.  The nose was fairly intense with grapefruit, grapefruit peel, apricot and honeydew melon fruits along with a kind of grassy herbaceousness.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of white grapefruit, honeydew melon and grassy herbs along with a touch of salinity and a strong mineral finish.  Like Tony, I found a lot of similarities between this wine and a Sauvignon Blanc-based wine. The salinity and minerality really put this over the top for me and give it a kind of complexity that is very difficult to find at this price point.  It would be a slam-dunk with fresh oysters and lots of other seafood as well.  Sauvignon Blanc fans will find a lot to like here, as will fans of bright, fresh white wines.

CITATIONS

1) Martinez, MC, & Perez, JE.  2000.  The forgotten vineyard of the Asturias Princedom (north of Spain) and ampelographic description of its grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.).  American Journal of Enology & Viticulture, 51(4), pp 370-378.

2) Gago, P, Santiago, JL, Boso, S, Alonso-Villaverde, V, Stella Grando, M, & Carmen Martinez, M.  2009.  Biodiversity and characterization of twenty-two Vitis vinifera L. cultivars in the northwestern Iberian peninsula.  American Journal of Enology & Viticulture, 60(3), pp 293-301.

3) Santiago, JL, Boso, S, Vilanova, M, & Carmen Martinez, M. 2005.  Characterisation of cv. Albarín Blanco (Vitis vinifera L.).  Synonyms, homonyms and errors of identification associated with this cultivar.  Journal International des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin, 39(2), pp 57-65.

4) Martin, JP, Borrego, J, Cabello, F, & Ortiz, JM.  2003.  Characterization of the Spanish diversity of grapevine cultivars using sequence-tagged microsatellite site markers.  Genome, 46, pp 10-18.

5) Martin, JP, Santiago, JL, Pinto-Carnide, O, Leal, F, Carmen Martinez, M, & Ortiz, JM.  2006.  Determination of relationships among autochthonus grapevine varieties (Vitis vinifera L.) in the northwest of the Iberian peninsula by using microsatellite markers.  Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution, 53, pp 1255-1261.