Decanter World Wine AwardsFirst tasting of ‘lost grapes’ in southwest France
- Friday 10 September 2010
- Comments (6)
The first tastings of several rare grape varieties are taking place this week at the Grape Conservatory in Saint Mont, southwest France.
Historians and ampelography experts are gathering to discover the results of mico-vinifications carried out on the 2008 and 2009 harvests.
The conservatory has been researching and reviving lost grape varieties which have played an important role in the history of winemaking in southwest France.
Through the research they hope to increase biodiversity, and to help researchers around the world identify the origins of many international varieties.
Some of these grape varieties are as yet unnamed, but have continued to grow in tiny quantities in traditional vineyard areas around Saint-Mont and Madiran.
They have been catalogued and gathered over 30 years by grape historian Jean-Paul Houbart. There are now over 120 variants.
Around 20 varieties are due to be tasted this weekend. ‘Around 10 have been identified for the very first time, and are named simply after the plot where they were found. Others we can trace historically, such as Ahumat and Morenoa, but which we believed had died out,’ the Conservatory’s technical director Olivier Bourdet-Pees told Decanter.com.
‘We intend to keep certain varieties for historical purposes, but others have real potential to be cloned and used in the vineyards.’
Have your say!
David Meakin
October 06 20:28
Great,but and a big but after 16 years of wine making in the south west and my wife on a tasting panel , we both can conclude that the bureauarcy and the rigidity of tasting panels means anything other than the norm is very difficult to get thru other than VDT (SANS IG) and unless you are well known it makes it difficult to charge a price to reflect the quality!! Talk more to the growers those of us that want to do something different, to see the real difficulties of taking this path!!!
Guy CARTIER
September 18 19:08
Bravo cousin et felicitations apres 30 ans de recherches. Nous t'attendons pour que tu nous tailles les pieds de vigne ici (4)
Je suis le mari de Marcelle.
Bisous de nous 2
Toni
September 13 16:46
Daren, Merci pour le grand site Web ! Ce que les grandes informations et le grand utilisateur même amical !
daren birchall
September 13 09:54
The diversity of grapes is one of the great things about the South West of France, there are 66 varieties commonly used.
If you're interested in this kind of thing there's a chart here www.vdso.fr/NEW/cepages.html