science

Today’s wine ‘made with grapes unchanged since medieval times’


Today’s drinkers might have more in common with medieval boozers than simply a hangover: research suggests they could be quaffing wine made from identical grapes.

Grapevines are often grown from cuttings of existing plants or by techniques such as grafting, rather than being planted from seeds, since this offers far greater consistency when it comes to the grapes.

That has led some to suggest that certain varieties might have remained essentially unchanged across two millennia since the Roman boom in wine production in the Mediterranean. Grapes were first domesticated more than 6,000 years ago in south-western Asia.

The latest research suggests that might not be too far-fetched. Scientists say they have discovered vines producing savagnin blanc grapes today are genetically identical to vines grown in Orléans 900 years ago.

“It tells us a lot about the ingenuity of winemakers, so they have been using similar techniques for hundreds of years and they have been keeping alive certain vines that consumers really like,” said Dr Nathan Wales, a co-author of the research from the University of York.

Writing in the journal Nature Plants, Wales and colleagues report that they analysed DNA recovered from 28 grape seeds found at nine archaeological sites around France, focusing on the genetic material in the seed that would have come from the vine on which the grapes grew. More specifically, the team looked at 10,000 particular points in the DNA and compared what they saw with such data for hundreds of modern domesticated and wild varieties.

Dating of artefacts or organic matter near to the seeds revealed that some of the ancient pips were from the iron age, around 500 BC, while others came from various points within the Roman era and others were from medieval times – the latest pips were from the early 13th century.

The team’s DNA analysis revealed that all 28 of the seeds came from domesticated grapevines rather than wild varieties, with most related to modern western European varieties used for winemaking.

Wales said several pieces of evidence suggest that they had indeed been involved in producing a tipple.

“Many of these sites have something connected to them related to winemaking or apparent vineyards,” said Wales, adding that the sites where the seeds were found also provided a clue. “Once you press grapes to make the juice you have to deposit [the seeds]. Often you see in archaeological sites, the easiest place to dump waste is a latrine or a well that is not being used any more.”

Further work showed that different varieties were sometimes cultivated at one site, while in some cases two or more genetically identical seeds were found in the same soil layer at a site, suggesting the grapes might have grown on the same vine. Intriguingly, a pair of seeds dating to the second century AD and found 600km (370 miles) apart in Alsace and Mediterranean France, also grew on genetically identical plants. “These genetic clones suggest that Romans transported grapevine across long distances …most likely as cuttings,” the authors write.

“That was really cool for us, where they have the same genetic sequence, but they are separated by hundreds of kilometres,” said Wales. “Really the only way to explain that is that, genetically, they are growing the same vines very far apart.”

One seed revealed that vines producing grapes in Orléans around 1050-1200 AD were genetically identical to those that produce savagnin blanc grapes today – in other words, it seems cuttings of the vines have continuously been made for about 900 years.

“Basically it is an identical twin that has just been maintained forever,” said Wales. What’s more, early Roman seeds from a site in Tourbes have a parent-offspring relationship to grapes for savagnin blanc. That, the authors write, could suggest “that either Savagnin Blanc or its direct relatives have been cultivated in France since the first century [AD].”

But whether the ancient wine would have tasted the same as today’s is another matter; as Wales points out, factors including terroir and processing techniques also affect the flavour.



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