Which Grapes Make Quality Wine — Beverages

Which Grapes Make Qualiły Wine?

BY GAETANO MARANGELLI

Old World society says Harry Charles Albert David Duke of Sussex is nobility and Rachel Meghan Markle wasn’t. Old World society says Meghan Markle was a commoner. But Harry and Meghan got married, and they had a son, Archie, and a daughter, Lillibet.

More than 98% of the wine we drink is made from Vitis Vinifera grapes—a single species of the Vitis genus of the Ampelidaceae family of vines. There are more than 10,000 strains of the Vitis vinifera species of grapes. Just six of them comprise more than 80% of the wine Americans drink. They are so-called noble grapes—pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, and riesling.

The roots of today’s viticulture lie in the Neolithic soils of the southern Caucasus Mountains, a region which includes parts of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and northern Iran and Iraq. In the Neolithic era, viticulturalists around the Black and Caspian Seas cultivated Vitis vinifera vines. Viticulture and Vitis vinifera made their way to Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean. Roman society advanced how viticulturists grew grapes and viniculturists made wine. Monks of the medieval Roman Catholic Church developed enduring ideas and techniques of grape farming and wine making. The Old World society of Europe codified wines made from Vitis vinifera strains as quality. Do the genus of Vitis vinifera and its strains of noble grapes owe their supremacy and nobility to the history of viticulture and viniculture of the Old World? Do they owe it to Old World migrants who imported their vines to the New Worlds of the Americas, South Africa and Oceania? Do they owe it to New World climates and soils, which don’t necessarily favor Old World vines?

What about the two percent of wine which isn’t made from Vitis vinifera strains? That two percent is made from species like Vitis riparia, Vitis berlandieri, Vitis rupestris, Vitis labrusca, and Vitis aestivalis. That two percent is also made from hybrid vines and their grapes. Hybrids are the kinds of vines and grapes the state of Wisconsin cultivates and vinifies best.

Hybrids refer to crossings of two species of Vitis vines. They include crossings of vine species native to North America with Vitis vinifera species. Viticulturists create hybrids primarily to resist biotic stresses, like fungal diseases, and abiotic stresses, like frost. In a climate like ours and with soils like ours, cultivating hybrids is the best way to make wine. The University of Minnesota Horticultural Research Center has made a specialty of developing high-quality, cold-hardy, disease-resistance hybrid grapes like Frontenac Noir, Marquette, Bluebell, Swenson Red, Itasca, La Crescent, and Edelweiss. (The University of Minnesota developed Swenson Red and La Crescent with Wisconsin native Elmer Swenson.)

The Wine and Spirits Education Trust, a leading global wine educator, teaches that hybrid grapes, by nature, make lesser quality wines. It’s fair to say that hybrids, relative to wines made from Vitis vinifera grapes, can display a lack of complex aromas and flavors, along with off-aromas and off-flavors. It’s fair to say that hybrids lack the benefit of the thousands of years of viticulture and viniculture of Vitis vinifera wines. It’s also fair to say that wine is a product of agriculture, which is subject to its society, culture, and history, as well as its climate and soils. The more Wisconsin makes the culture of growing hybrid grapes and making hybrid wine its own, the more delicious hybrid wines we make.

What people call quality wine is a custom of their society and culture. Like doublets and hose for gentlemen. Like chaperones for unmarried women. Like a class of people called noble and a class of people called common. Like high-alcohol cabernet sauvignon and oaky chardonnay. An Old World society may call six strains of the Vitis vinifera species its nobility. A New World society like ours— with our climate, our soils, and our history—isn’t obliged to.

Gaetano Marangelli is a sommelier and playwright. He was the managing director of a wine import and distribution company in New York and beverage director for restaurants and retailers in New York and Chicago before moving to Wauwatosa.