For the 36th episode of the Wine Makers Show, your wine podcast, we went to meet Olivier Yobregat, a renowned ampelographer. Over the course of this episode, we set off to discover the mysterious life of grape varieties and the vine. In this episode, you’ll learn what hides behind the vine. Enjoy!

Hi Olivier. You’re the international expert on grape varieties in wine and the diversity of grape varieties.

I wouldn’t dare say I’m the expert. I’m not on my own, I’m part of the very small circle of what we can call ampelographers.

We’re going to talk about plenty of things, but can you start by introducing yourself?

My name is Olivier Yobregat, I’m 51, and I’ve been working for 23 years now in the field of grapevine genetic resources. First, in a small organisation called SICAREX Sud-Ouest, which was very local, covering a few departments of the South-West, where I handled the conservation, selection and study of plant material, grape varieties, their clones, their diversity, and so on. Issues related to the applied genetics of the vine. In 2007, this small company merged into the large entity that had just been born, the Institut Français de la Vigne et du Vin, which came out of the grouping of several organisations. I had joined this organisation to create a genetic resources hub, in the Institute’s South-West centre, based in the Gaillac vineyard.

How did you get here, becoming passionate about these subjects of the vine and wine? How did it start?

My grandfather was a winemaker in Gaillac. As a child, I loved rummaging around in the cellar: it smelled good, it was an old-fashioned cellar, there were old vines. I always loved that. I very quickly became passionate, even as a young boy, about plants. I always loved trees, I grew little nurseries in my grandmother’s garden. When the time came to make a choice, I decided to go to an agronomy school. I had it in mind to eventually work in the world of wine. The three years at the agronomy school in Montpellier confirmed me in that idea. I came out of those studies an agronomy engineer, specialised in viticulture, and an oenologist.

During those times in the family vineyard, did you follow the vine? How did it go?

My grandfather was very old. It was my uncle who later took over the estate. Yes, I wandered through the vines, through the orchards. I discovered the work of wine there too. The cellar, I wasn’t really allowed in when there was wine, because there were old tanks set down below, so there was a certain danger for young children. But yes, those were moments of discovery, undeniably.

From that moment on, you became passionate about plant material? Were they unconventional grape varieties?

My grandfather didn’t make the Gaillac appellation. He was on the plain, he made table wine. There were hybrids, Portugais Bleu, a very early variety that had its heyday in Gaillac and is almost gone today. There were a few vines like that, but they were table wines. I still remember the taste of the wine, it was a slightly purple wine, I was allowed to drink it with a little water. They weren’t grands crus. What I liked… He made sweet wines with Loin de l’Oeil, and sparkling wines that I enjoyed. That was surely the best of it, his reds weren’t extraordinary.

Can you give us a quick little definition of the word “hybrid”?

Hybrids are varieties introduced from North America at first, and then created in France from the late 19th century, mainly to fight the diseases we had imported, in particular phylloxera, and later downy mildew and powdery mildew. They are crosses between individuals from American wild vine species, which are different from the European species. From the late 19th century, these hybrids spread. They had the particularity of resisting diseases, more or less well depending on the variety in question. But the quality of the wine made from them never came close to the quality of the good old grape varieties that had been cultivated in France for at least two millennia. There was a certain success, because they needed few treatments, they were fairly hardy varieties that easily produced a lot. We peaked at 400,000 hectares of these hybrids in France, in the 1960s, before, little by little, with the help of advances in crop protection, the regulations of the appellations and the vins de pays sidelined these varieties that couldn’t reach the quality level of the great grape varieties. Little by little, these varieties declined.

Have they disappeared today?

They haven’t disappeared. There’s always a little of these old hybrids left. And today they’re making a strong comeback. Everything we call resistant varieties today, those are hybrids. There are modern hybrids that we still obtain through crosses. It’s always the same techniques: we cross varieties with one another. We cross a resistance donor, derived more or less distantly from American or Asian species that resist diseases, with a quality parent, traditional grape varieties from different origins. The difference with the old hybridizers is that today we have genetic tools, genetic analyses that allow us to sort the descendants, in particular those that resist diseases, and that allow us to select faster. The principle is simple: we make crosses. To combine a whole set of traits, you have to make a lot of children and pick from among those children the ones that have the traits we’re interested in: both quality and disease resistance. Today we have the means to go much faster than the old hybridizers did, and so to have a bit more success in combining both these resistances and these qualities. Today it’s the simplest way to limit the use of crop protection products: tapping into natural resistances found in wild vines, not on our continent, but in North America and Asia.

Isn’t there a risk, on the flip side, of losing our original genetic heritage?

Today, the risk would be that all our old grape varieties get supplanted by newcomers that are superior to them in terms of disease resistance. That’s an obvious risk. Their disappearance, no, we’re not there. These varieties have a long past, and they have a long future, because they’re varieties that express a terroir, characteristics, distinctive traits, a long history and great qualities. We can’t imagine Bordeaux doing without Cabernet Sauvignon. We can’t imagine Burgundy doing without Pinot Noir, even to replace it with a descendant that would resist diseases better, no. In the medium term, we can’t imagine them being supplanted.

Let’s come back a bit to your path. You enter an agronomy school in Montpellier. Did you make that choice already knowing you wanted to work in wine? Or is it something you matured over the course of your studies?

It matured during my studies. I wanted to do agronomy, I was certain of that. In which branch? I had several ideas. The agronomy school led me quite naturally towards the world of wine. I did several internships to find out whether I was sure about working in this field, and it was confirmed. You make encounters, there were extraordinary professors. One of my professors was a monument of knowledge. He was an old-fashioned professor, very paternalistic with his students, who respected us enormously, who went to great lengths to find internships all over the world because he had contacts everywhere. He was a globetrotter long before we travelled so easily. He was a guy with an enthusiasm and a passion that he passed on to his students, and who was also very demanding with them. You’d better not miss a class or a field trip. He got me out of bed once, because I hadn’t woken up on a morning when we were leaving very early for a field trip. He was like that. Alongside him, there’s professor Jean-Michel Boursiquot, a tremendous ampelographer. He too managed to pass on to us a passion, incredible skills. In my career I had the chance to work with him, and even still, now that he’s retired, and that’s a great honour, a privilege. We could also mention professor François Champagnol, who was the world specialist in vine physiology, and who wrote a reference book on it, by the way. There really are inspiring people.

Did it become obvious that this was what you wanted to do? Was it ampelographer right from school?

No, it was the world of the vine and wine. I was leaning more towards oenology at first, and I branched off. I worked for a few years at the Chamber of Agriculture, as a viticulture and oenology adviser. Little by little, being out in the field, I realised that my preferences kept bringing me back towards the plant, more than towards cellar work. I was much more drawn to plant issues, vine management, varieties, diseases, and so on. When the opportunity came up to work in the field of plants, I seized a position that was opening up at SICAREX Sud-Ouest, where I dove headfirst into everything to do with genetic resources and the world of the agricultural nursery, the technique of plant propagation.

What drew you in there, what fascinates you about the plant side?

The diversity. The diversity of vine material. It’s extraordinary. I don’t think there’s any crop that has plant material as diverse, as rich, that can offer so many possibilities, so many discoveries. If we talk about the old grape varieties, the varieties of the historical wine world, around the Mediterranean basin all the way to the Middle East, we know 6,000 to 7,000 grape varieties today. But there have been thousands of them, perhaps tens of thousands of others, with fleeting existences, since we began cultivating the vine, that is to say around 8,000 years ago. It’s an extraordinary diversity that we went on to broaden by seeking out somewhat distant species, as I was saying earlier, the American and Asian species, which made it possible to provide parents for resistances, which made it possible to provide rootstocks when the diseases began to invade our continent and to prevent the continuation of the ancestral mode of cultivation.

It’s a genetic diversity that’s quite marked by the work of man and by the action of man.

Man’s hand on this plant is enormous. Like any cultivated or domesticated species, animal or plant, you start from a wild species, here the wild vine, Vitis Vinifera, which we call the subspecies Sylvestris, because it climbs up trees. On top of that, man lays his hand, begins to choose things that interest him, to cultivate them, to reject what doesn’t work well, what doesn’t pollinate well, what doesn’t make nice berries, and so on, sometimes to spot mutations, to cross again, to sow seeds, and so on. And little by little, what man cultivates moves away, begins to diverge very deeply from what remains in the wild without that process of selection, of choice by man. In the end, you have two groups that are completely different: the wild vine is dioecious, meaning there are male plants and female plants. The female plant waits for pollen coming from another plant in order to be fertilised. A male plant makes no grapes, only pollen. We can’t imagine a cultivated vine that makes no grapes. Man chose, without knowing it, hermaphrodite mutants, that is to say ones that fertilise themselves, because they have both male and female organs on the same flower. That ensures a much more homogeneous and regular fertilisation. The pollen is carried by the wind. In poor weather conditions, if it rains too much, the pollen doesn’t fly well. Whereas if it’s released by the same flower and falls directly onto the pistil just below, fertilisation happens much more easily. Men noticed: there were a few plants that produced every year, and that’s what was chosen. It’s a major trait: cultivated vine varieties are hermaphrodite. Except for a few varieties that are female, which we interpret as an archaic trait. They’re varieties that produce poorly, that sometimes have small badly fertilised berries, large berries, that have big yield irregularities. We consider that these female grape varieties we have in the collections are survivors of archaic, poorly selected vines. That’s a first trait we selected. After that, we began to select different berry sizes. The wild vine makes very tiny berries; the cultivated vine makes large berries, sometimes enormous for some table grapes. Upright growth habits that are much easier to manage. The wild vine, when you try to train it, makes spindly shoots that fall to the ground, unlike the cultivated vine that makes vigorous shoots, many of them upright. That’s what we call the domestication syndrome: a set of traits that make cultivated varieties diverge from their wild ancestors. It’s a bit the same thing that separates the different dog breeds from the wild ancestor that must have looked like a wolf.

It’s something we continue to do today.

The human species, at an accelerated pace, continues to make crosses, to choose a significant number of descendants that will become new varieties, if we choose them and propagate them vegetatively.

Today, you’re an ampelographer. What does that mean?

Ampelography is the knowledge of the vine. We apply this term to the study of the diversity of the vine, the knowledge of its diversity, of the varieties, of their behaviour, of their adaptation to the environment. It includes what we can call descriptive ampelography, that is to say knowing how to describe and recognise the varieties. You can call yourself an ampelographer from the moment you begin to know how to recognise a certain number of grape varieties. It’s the discipline of description and recognition, which isn’t obvious and which takes years of practice and study, that we pass on. We run training courses under the guidance of Jean-Michel Boursiquot, who structured and created these ampelography courses. There’s been very strong demand, by the way, for some years now, from people who want to train. That’s one part of ampelography. But it also includes all the historical knowledge of the varieties, the knowledge of grape variety names. It’s a sub-discipline of ampelography to which we’ve given the name ampelonymy: the study of grape variety names. There’s plenty to say about just that. Grape variety names, it’s incredible, there are tens of thousands of grape variety names. A grape variety can have up to a hundred different synonyms. That’s the case for Côt, which is surely the champion in France for the number of synonyms.

Côt, which is Malbec.

Yes, Côt, or Malbec, or Auxerrois, or Bouchalès, or Pied de Perdrix, Gourdon, Noir de Pressac… There’s an impressive number of synonyms, because it was cultivated in many places in France. At the end of the 19th century, it’s probably the most widespread grape variety, so it had a lot of synonyms. It’s sometimes complicated to establish the synonymy of the varieties. We have the reverse phenomenon, which is just as complicated, homonymy. That is to say that under a single name you could designate several different grape varieties. These are two important problems, a complication when you read the grape variety names in old texts.

What else is ampelography?

Today, ampelography increasingly drifts towards genetics. Understanding the genetic traits that make grape varieties distinctive; the agronomic characteristics: an upright growth habit, a phenology, that is to say an early or late ripening; clonal, intra-varietal diversity, that is to say within the varieties, as they are propagated and dispersed, a certain number of mutations can arise that give us small differences within a single grape variety. We call those clonal differences. The most famous ones: you start from a Grenache Noir for example, and all of a sudden there’s a white plant, a slightly less coloured plant in the middle. We take it, we propagate it again vegetatively, and we’ve separated Grenache Blanc from Grenache Gris from Grenache Noir. These are mutations that are clearly visible because the colour of the berries is quite striking. There are other types of behaviour that are a bit harder to see, that sometimes require setting up trial plots to try to understand these differences. It can be later-ripening clones within a single variety, more or less loose clusters. A whole set of agronomic behaviours that we try to characterise, to select and to use in viticulture. It’s the continuation of the selection work that men have always done.

Your daily work runs from where to where?

When we talk about old grape varieties, it consists in safeguarding them, that is to say a big job of prospecting. We seek out these resources more and more. Going to mark vine stocks, to observe stocks in old plots, on old plantings. Sometimes it can be regrowth in the sands. Marking, identifying, gathering the diversity into conservatories. The second stage of this long process is to create conservatory collections of grape varieties. Here, for example, we have 100 grape varieties that represent part of all the diversity we’ve been able to find in the South-West, foreign grape varieties, and grape variety collections. We also create diversity collections within a single grape variety. For example, at our site in Gaillac, we have around 650 origins of Duras, of Braucol or Fer Servadou, of Mauzac, of Loin de l’Oeil, of Ondenc, and of Prunelard, which are Gaillac varieties. Based on several years of prospecting to try to bring back, for example, within the Duras grape variety everything that makes up its diversity. 150 origins of Duras, coming from all over, from old plots. Trying to capture, to conserve, to gather what makes up the diversity within this grape variety itself. Those are the two types of conservatory: a collection of grape varieties and a collection of origins of the grape variety. The work beyond that is to select from among the grape variety collections. It’s trying to obtain a certain number of characteristics within the collections, so as to be able to bring out a few old varieties. To say “look, this one, with the current changes, could be interesting, it’s an original variety, it’s historically attached to this terroir, and so on.” Then to set up small plots, in collaboration with winemakers. Sometimes, as we’ve just done for an old grape variety from Aveyron, it can lead to bringing this variety back into cultivation, if it turns out to be interesting. The second selection process is to select within a single grape variety. It’s what we call clonal selection: a set of diversity within a single grape variety. We study, we isolate the traits that may be interesting in certain origins, we select them, and we make them available to viticulture, saying “here, we have a selection in this grape variety that has slightly looser clusters, that have a bit more acidity, and so on.” We try to characterise what makes up its diversity in order to make it available to winemakers. That’s all the work on the old varieties. We also can’t pass over in silence the fact that, in this work, the final stage of the rocket is their propagation. We also have to ensure they’re made available on a large scale, either of these selected clones or of these old varieties. We have to set up plots. We have sanitary standards to avoid propagating viruses, which are very serious scourges for the vine. A whole continuum from the search for old resources, old varieties within old plots, to their being made available to viticulture. That’s roughly my work in this field, today. We also carry out activities in varietal creation. We’ve made crosses, recently, with regional varieties. There’s a whole set of activities tied to all these processes.

Have you identified any dangers for the French vineyard?

There are two big issues today. There’s obviously climate change, which means certain varieties, in the places where they’re usually planted, end up in difficulty. We can talk about the ripening problem, of early varieties that ripen earlier and earlier, with higher and higher alcohol levels, acidities that drop, difficulties in relation to drought periods. Climate change is a real challenge that viticulture is facing. There’s a huge amount of work being carried out in every field. Whether it’s adaptation through plant material, through rootstocks. A lot of that has been done at INRAE in Bordeaux, which centralises the work on rootstocks. We’re studying rootstocks that we’d somewhat neglected, that we have in France, very vigorous, that resist drought. We’re studying foreign rootstock varieties that could bring solutions. The rootstocks from Australia, for example, that they use in almost desert-like zones. There’s a whole body of work on adaptation through the rootstock. We’re also studying, through selection, foreign varieties that are known to grow in places much drier and hotter than our vineyards. We’re rediscovering certain old grape varieties that have interesting development cycles with this in mind. That’s one aspect, but there’s also the work on cultivation techniques, vine irrigation, training methods to minimise transpiration as much as possible, to protect the clusters… And then the corrective work afterwards, and the adapting of cellars. Every aspect of viticulture and oenology is being studied today, with the aim of providing solutions for viticulture to adapt to this issue of climate change. The second field of difficulty for viticulture, not just French but also worldwide, is diseases. There’s no mystery. The evolutionary history of Vitis Vinifera is simple but terrible. For no less than 8,000 years, the vine stayed in its area of origin, where the natural species had grown and developed, in balance with its parasites. A parasite has no interest in destroying its larder, otherwise it shoots itself in the foot, it has nothing to eat. The vine had evolved in an environment. We say that evolution is a gene-for-gene dialogue. That is to say that when there’s a parasite that becomes a bit virulent, the species finds a way to get around it, and little by little a balance forms. The vine was in balance in its environment, we cultivated it in the environment where the wild species originated, and it went very well. When you read old works of agriculture, the main enemy was the pyralid, the caterpillar. Everything changed when we began to make the vine travel into hostile environments. It’s simple, it died. The settlers who began to plant the vine in North America watched the vine wither and didn’t understand why. Today, we know why. It was dying from phylloxera, downy mildew and powdery mildew. Things got rather worse when, on the return journey, we brought back these diseases, on cuttings, on rooted plants, on curiosity vines that were American wild vines. When we brought these diseases back to Europe, they fell upon our poor species that wasn’t armed against this scourge. First it was powdery mildew, which developed from 1847. The vine didn’t have defence mechanisms efficient enough against this fungus. We had to find ways. It was sulphur that was found. Then it was phylloxera. It was a war, a monumental trauma. The literature that phylloxera generated is extraordinary. The decline was very rapid. It forced a radical change in the way of cultivating. Since phylloxera attacked the roots, we first tried to treat the soil with very polluting products, it didn’t work, it was very imperfect and very costly. We found the solution of rootstocks by using natural resistances, American vines. They serve as roots. We graft our grape varieties onto them. We keep the traits of the grape variety, but the roots are no longer from Vitis Vinifera, they’re from multiple crosses based on American species. It forced everything to be replanted and the mode of cultivation to be completely changed. It was an extraordinary upheaval. The story continues. In the 20th century the vector of flavescence dorée arrived. We now have the Xylella bacterial strain, which attacks the vine and is very virulent in the United States. It’s this incessant fight against diseases, the second issue, along with global warming.

I get the impression that one of the elements of the answer to climate change is the matching of the grape variety with the climate. Could these grape varieties be one of the solutions for viticulture?

It’s a thoroughly interesting avenue. As a preamble, we’re lucky in France to have set up, since 1876, a policy of conserving genetic resources. 1876 is the start of the vine collection of the Montpellier agronomy school, which became the INRA conservatory at Vassal. Its central role in conservation and genetic studies should be pointed out. It’s the world’s Conservatory of the vine today. Little by little, a conservation policy was structured in France, which means that as soon as we discover something unknown in a vine, it immediately goes into the national collection. We duplicate it in the regional conservatories that are federated around conservation methods all over France. We have a policy of conserving and studying resources. Which means we have a great deal of information about what makes up the heritage of our old grape varieties. In France, we have today in collection around 400 old ancient varieties. Among these old varieties, about half are registered in the French catalogue, are officially authorised for cultivation and are used. Among these 200 old French grape varieties, there are plenty that aren’t cultivated. It’s not because they’re registered in the catalogue that they’re cultivated. For the great majority, there’s less than a hectare of each. We can say that they’re grape varieties very little used at the cultivation level, but not in danger of disappearing, because we conserve them. Among all these grape varieties, there’s every kind of behaviour. There are late ones, which are interesting today, with the changes we know about. But we also have very early grape varieties. There’s no real rule, there’s an enormous amount of diversity. Today, we talk more about the forgotten grape varieties as a means of adaptation. It’s true, there are some. We’ve just registered Felen Blanc in the catalogue, an old variety from Aveyron that’s very late, that has very good acidity, and that, through these behaviours, has a few advantages in relation to global warming. But there are also extremely early varieties that are in the conservatory and that have disappeared from cultivation. We can mention Madeleine Noire, a very old grape variety, one of the earliest. The Canari de l’Ariège, planted on the heights, which has the advantage of ripening very early; but today, in my collection, by the beginning of August it’s scorched. There’s a bit of everything. In this kind of gene pool, there are varieties that can bring partial solutions.

I get the impression that there are two big stakes: the conservation of the different species to maintain this diversity, and intra-varietal conservation, which means, within the same grape variety, the conservation of different clones, which have different qualities?

Within the species Vitis Vinifera there are differences in sensitivity between grape varieties, but within a single grape variety there are no differences in disease resistance. Apart from one particular case, Botrytis, which is the rot on grapes. There are clonal differences linked to cluster architecture. We have more or less loose clusters. The more compact a cluster is, the more it tightens, the more it will be sensitive to rot. We have clonal differences in cluster compactness within a single grape variety. Here in Gaillac, we know Mauzac well. We have Mauzac with very compact clusters, and Mauzac with long peduncles and very loose clusters. These are very clear-cut behaviours, it’s perfectly stable. There are selected clones with compact clusters and selected clones with loose clusters. It’s an example of what clonal diversity can be. Here, it’s correlated with a greater or lesser sensitivity to Botrytis. There are sometimes clones with slightly thicker skins or things that are later, more acidic. Acidity is also a factor that helps resist rot. In relation to Botrytis, there can be clonal differences. At the level of the major diseases, downy mildew, powdery mildew mainly, we’ve never demonstrated that.

What are the other differences between the different clones of a single grape variety?

They’re highly variable. It can concern all the ampelographic criteria. There are things that don’t interest winemakers at all. We have, for example, within the Négrette de Fronton some clones that have very deeply lobed leaves and others that have round, entire leaves. It remains the same grape variety, but when you look at them side by side, they don’t resemble each other at all. It’s not at all correlated with any agronomic behaviour, it’s purely visual. On the other hand, we also have clones of Négrette that make tiny clusters, so with a very low yield. We’re in the process of studying some of these origins to quantify their production potential, to look at their polyphenol richness, their colour, to see whether we can use this diversity to make concentrated, highly expressive Négrettes, for example. Clonal diversity can be linked to the intensity of the anthocyanic pigmentation of the veins. The veins are more or less coloured. We know this for example on Chenin. There are very red veins and clones of Chenin that are more or less coloured at the level of the veins. It’s anecdotal, it only amuses the ampelographers, but it’s part of clonal diversity. We have more or less upright growth habits. There, it can be interesting. An upright habit is easier to train than a drooping one. The more spreading shoots are more complicated to train on a wire than something that grows straighter. Then, we have the whole palette of agronomically interesting variations at the level of the grape. The shift in ripening. Chenin has more or less early clones. We have different acidity levels. We’re in the process of looking, within the diversity of Merlot, for later-ripening clones. Merlot being fairly early in ripening, it ripens earlier and earlier, with higher and higher levels. The stake is to look in the diversity of Merlot for things that go against that, later-ripening, more acidic. Not easy. Clonal diversity gathers all the mutations, it’s completely random. It can touch anecdotal traits or very important ones.

Terroir is a set of pedoclimatic conditions, that is to say the action of man, the practices, and so on. Within the word terroir, we put a lot of things. So yes, the adaptation of varieties to such-and-such a type of ripening conditions is essential. To know whether a variety can adapt to a type of terroir or a region, you have to know it well. We’ve managed to adapt varieties ever since we use rootstocks. At the soil level, we already have possibilities of adaptation that are much broader than when we cultivated the varieties without grafting them, on their own roots. Something we’ve somewhat forgotten and that’s a consequence of grafting is that, for example with Pinot Noir, but it’s true with any grape variety from a region: not only did Pinot Noir have to give a satisfactory ripeness in the place where it was cultivated, but it also had to grow, on its own roots, in the terroir, in the soil, where it was cultivated. So there was a double adaptation. If Chardonnay hadn’t grown in Burgundy, if its roots hadn’t adapted to the soil of Burgundy, we’d never have propagated Chardonnay in Burgundy. Whereas with a rootstock, we manage at least to adapt it to different types of soils, where it might not have grown very well on its own roots. When we talk about adaptation to terroir, we’ve completely changed the picture with grafting, at least at the level of adaptation to soil, to the soil component of terroir. At the level of general adaptation to climatic conditions, we determine today climatic indices for grape varieties, which determine an optimal range of temperatures, within which the grape variety is comfortable enough to achieve good ripeness. We can always go a bit outside it. For example, Chardonnay wouldn’t be cultivated at all in Australia if we stuck only to these criteria, where it’s nonetheless widely cultivated and where it gives excellent products. The action of man makes it possible to go a bit beyond the strict limits of the grape varieties.

Very probably. There are grape varieties that attract birds, that’s very clear. In a collection where we cultivate a great many grape varieties, we spot the ones that are more easily eaten by birds, it’s quite clear. The Magdeleine Noire des Charentes, a very early grape variety, is eaten by birds very early. Since it ripens early, the starlings come to eat it, in the middle of 400 other grape varieties. We have grape varieties that are more attractive to certain pathogenic fungi and certain insects. Carignan is a model of sensitivity to powdery mildew. Yes, there are interactions between the varieties and their environment. It’s increasingly studied at the level of the soil’s microfauna, in relation to the soil fungi, in the rhizosphere, that is to say everything that’s around the roots. There’s more and more work aiming to characterise what we call the microbiota of the vine. And why not see one day distinctive features linked to grape varieties.

Does it emerge that certain grape varieties should be cultivated more in certain places to favour an overall balance?

We’re not really there. In terms of disease sensitivity, yes. Historically, when certain diseases arrived, before we discovered the means to treat them, there are certain grape varieties that were set aside, because they were too sensitive to powdery mildew. That kind of matching can still be valid.

You warned our listeners at the start of the episode that this was a limitless subject of incredible depth. I think that’s the case since we’re already at the 56th minute of recording and I get the impression we’re only at the surface of everything the vine has in store for us.

We’ve only scratched the surface of the subject. There’s a sense of wonder I wanted to share. If we sow Syrah seeds that were fertilised by Syrah, all the seeds that germinate each give a different individual. That’s how varieties are born. Each seed is a different individual, which becomes a grape variety from the moment it’s propagated vegetatively, and we get the same thing. That means that at the origin of the Pinot Noir that covers the planet today, or of Cabernet Sauvignon, there was a single vine stock that had been spotted. Perhaps a monk, in the Middle Ages, sowed seeds and spotted, among the plants that had grown, Pinot Noir and said to himself, “look, that’s a lovely grape, it’s good.” He propagated branches of it and Pinot Noir went off like that to conquer the world. That means two things: it means that from a single stock and the miracle of vegetative propagation, we can cover the planet with a single individual; and above all, it means that this ensures an immortality for that individual. Pinot Noir was perhaps born a thousand years ago from a sowing of a seed in a monk’s garden. It’s a supposition, we have nothing to support it, but it’s possible. And it’s still alive, Pinot Noir. As long as someone replants Pinot Noir, that original plant is still alive. It’s exceptional. We have grape varieties like Muscat à Petits Grains, whose original cradle we’ve found in Greece. We’re certain that this grape variety has more than 2,000 years of existence. For more than 2,000 years we’ve continued to take cuttings of what was originally a sowing in the depths of Ancient Greece. I find it’s a miracle, it’s wonderful to think that this variety is still alive. As long as we propagate it, it will remain alive. It’s capable of covering the planet from a single individual.

I have three questions left to wrap up this episode. The first, do you have a recent favourite tasting?

Yes, a lovely tasting, it was in June 2019, I had the chance to be invited to Côte-Rôtie, to celebrate their appellation and Syrah. On that occasion, I had the privilege of being invited to a phenomenal tasting of Côte-Rôtie, of very old wines, of old vintages, of straw wines. It was really a favourite. I’m in love with wines that are rich. The Rhône Valley is among the products I prefer. And there, it was really wonderful. I’ll never forget that tasting.

Do you have a wine book to recommend to me?

I’m a lover of books, I collect, I gather everything I can in the way of old literature on the vine and wine. I wanted to mention a tiny little book, in the Que sais-je collection. It’s a book by Louis Levadoux, simply called La vigne et sa culture. This book is wonderful. Louis Levadoux is a giant of ampelography. He died at the end of the 1970s. He was director of the INRA wine station in Bordeaux, after having passed through the Montpellier school and held a post in Algeria. He was an extraordinary ampelographer, as well as an enormous connoisseur of the vine. He was a guy who had incredible verve, he writes with emphasis, he spoke six languages, including Russian and Arabic if I remember, Ancient Greek and Latin too. So he wrote, for the Que sais-je collection, this little book, in the 1960s, that you can still find at flea markets, or sometimes on the internet. I recommend it both because it’s extraordinarily precise and concise, and because the writing is very beautiful.

Buy La Vigne et sa Culture

Finally, who is the next person I should interview on this podcast?

The first person, who is also someone extraordinary that I’ve had the chance to meet, if it’s ever possible, is a New Zealander named Geoff Thorpe. He’s the founder and director, today, of Riversun Nursery, which is the biggest viticultural nursery in New Zealand. He has a philosophy, an approach to the vine, that’s extraordinary. He’s a phenomenon. His philosophy is “when I set something up, I ask myself whether it can last a thousand years.” He applies that to the cultivation of his vines. A herbicide can’t last a thousand years, so I’ll never use herbicide again. He prepares composts, and so on, all with the aim of propagating the vine. Every time he thinks something through, he says “this thing I’m doing here, can I do it for a thousand years, without causing disorder?” He has this philosophy, it’s quite extraordinary. I can also point you to someone who is more immediately accessible, who is also wonderful. He’s a former winemaker and former director of the Plaimont cellar, in Saint-Mont. André Dubosc, a charismatic guy, an enthusiastic person, a visionary, who was the first, for example, to agree to protect the old plots of this wine-growing area that’s very forthcoming, who put in place a major quality policy. He too has a vision deeply rooted in his terroir, in his history of the vine. He’s someone who’s really fascinating, very interesting. He was also a friend of Levadoux, whom we mentioned earlier.