Cépage and grapevine varieties

Words like Chardonnay, Gamay, Sauvignon Blanc, or Merlot seem to have a clear definition. These are the names of grape varieties, “Cépage” in French or “Vitigno” in Italian. Most people have the same idea about grape variety, similar to race in the animal kingdom, which shares the same properties worldwide and during the time. A Chardonnay is a Chardonnay, after all, they sold bottles of Chardonnay and Merlot, and it should be the same things.

But is it? To answer this question, we need to see how wild grape vines were domesticated, how the notion of “Cépage” came into the wine world, how it evolved, and what science says about it.

Most grape varieties used to make wine descend from a single wild variety, Vitis Vinifera Sylvertis. 8000 years ago, people began to domesticate this wild plant in an area going from The Caucasus to Iran. They tried to select the wild vine to reproduce properties they enjoy, such as bigger fruits, higher levels of sugar, and red or white color.

It was a long process; people needed to understand how to produce similar plants, you do not want fruits that taste different from one generation to another. This is the beginning of the notion of grape variety.

Later, grape varieties were present in the antic art, in Egypt. Ancient Greek and Roman authors give us the first text about them. However, the concept of grape variety or “Cépage” wasn’t fully defined until the end of the Middle Ages.

Various names appear, Pinot Noir and Gamay (The Duke of Burgundy, Philippe II le Hardy, with the law banning Gamay). But the notion of “Cépage” and grape variety was still vague. The French word “Cépage” and its first definition come from the 16th. Names for example were not standardized, something could be called Auxerois in one place and Côt in another place, and the same variety could have several names adding more confusion to the notion.

Scientists and botanists established some rules about cultivars (an alternative for the French word “Cépage”). They started with morphology, the shape of the leave, the colour of the berry, and the cluster’s shape, or how long it took for the fruit to rip. This new science is called Ampelography, the science of identification and classification of grapevines.

And with the evolution of science, the concept of “Cépage” became something different than the common people could think. If you think about Chardonnay, it is a varietal group, a family, you don’t have only one member and like in a family each member is slightly different. In viticulture, we talk about clones. A clone can share certain similarities but does not have the same DNA. For example, Chardonnay 75 and “Chardonnay à queue rouge” are Chardonnay but are not identic. Between clones, the taste can be different. Another example is the Pinot, Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Meunier, these are all members of the Pinot “Cépage”, from sciences the only difference is one mutation on one gene coding the berry colour (Pinot Meunier is an exception, the mutation is elsewhere).

Where do these clones come from? As for any other agricultural product, controlling the quality of a plant’s reproduction is important. Grapes vines are a plant that naturally uses sexual reproduction. There are female and male flowers, and they exchange gametes using insects, winds, and other ways. But sexual reproduction can be a problem if your goal is to keep the same characteristics over new generations. Mixing genes could result in totally different individuals. Uncontrolled it could end up with very bad grapes or excellent ones. Take Chardonnay, it was discovered somewhere in the actual Burgundy region, it is a natural cross between Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc (a variety used to make cheap and bad wine). So somewhere in this region, a bee or any other insect accidentally helped create the well-known variety.

The origin of many varieties is similar, a sexual reproduction between two varieties. Another example is the Carbenet Sauvignon, the offspring of Cabernet France and Sauvignon Blanc.

In agriculture, like in any other business, relying on chance is never a good strategy, especially if you want to plant an entire vineyard, you want to have the same variety. Planting grape seeds is too risky business.

Fortunately, there is another way to reproduce grape vines, vegetative reproduction. A new plant grows from the cutting of another plant. It is an asexual reproduction, the new plant is identical to its parent, a clone.

It became the main method for planting new fields. Creating clones was first artisanal but it. Quickly became a new industry after the phylloxera crisis, grafting was almost an obligation to combat the disease. Vine nurseries become the main supplier of clones everywhere in the world. If a winemaker needs to plant a new field, it can ask the nursery to provide new genetically identical vines.

To better understand the concept of clones, each variety can have several clones, depending on the nursery, country or event, and wine region. For example, Chardonnay has more than 2000 clones. Each clone has different characteristics, flavours, alcohol potential, acid profiles, and productivity. But there are still existing old vines that may have a distinct genetic profile. Knowing that two bottles of chardonnay can be different (without thinking of the region, winemaking, terroir, climate,…) they cannot be compared.

There are some rules, clones are certified by different organizations. In France, INRA (Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement, National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment) is the main certification body, for Chardonnay, 32 clones are certified (including one pink Chardonnay), 19 clones for Malbec, 47 for the Pinot Noir.

But cloning has a main default, the lake of diversity. Some varieties use only a few clones across the world, which can have some kind of standardization and create boring wine. But there are solutions, across the world, organizations like the INRA in France and universities keep creating new clones. New clones are often based on research in old vineyards and vines found everywhere. Another solution, used by some winemakers, is the massal selection. The winegrowers select several plants of one variety based on their qualities and use them to create several clones ready to be planted. Unlike traditional cloning, here several individuals are used. It brings more diversity in the field and more quality in the wine.

“Cépage” or grape variety is a complex concept, more winegrower-oriented than science-oriented. The concept is more similar to a family will several individuals that share typical characteristics with their own particularities. Clones do play a role in the taste of the wine, but not more as the “Terroir” or the winemaking talent. And even if the same clone is planted in the field, some other factors, and sometimes, genetic mutation, can also add diversity to the vines.