A Medieval Grape Is Still Used to Make Wine | Hacker News Reader

A Medieval Grape Is Still Used to Make Wine

theatlantic.com

44 pointslordnacho16 comments

A similar thing can be said for "spelt" (a kind of wheat).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelt

> Spelt was an important staple in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times; it now survives as a relict crop in Central Europe and northern Spain, and has also found a new market as a 'health food'.

Rather odd to talk about wine continuity across the centuries without mentioning phylloxera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight

So the seeds might be the same, but the roots often aren't.

I kept seeing somewhere for a while that Ohio based grape varieties are used for the root stock now used, but I can't find this anywhere now. Perhaps it isn't accurate.

Uncertain that they were from Ohio, but it was (and is) American rootstock that’s used to combat the parasite.

I had read earlier that the rootstock came from Ingleside, near Corpus Christi, TX. Wikipedia says they came from Temple, TX.

I was actually just talking to a coworker last week about this, and he told me that modern rootstock almost entirely comes from Grayson County, Texas (a.k.a. the Sherman-Denison MSA, just north of the Dallas area).

Interestingly enough, a few weeks ago I had a Riesling from Washington that had "100% vinifera rootstock" prominently printed on the label. Not every part of the world got hit by phylloxera. I understand that some parts of South America (either Argentina or Chile, I can't remember) were spared as well.

There are still pre-phylloxera vines in South Australia as well that are over 150 years old.

At a wine seminar I attended a few years ago we primarily had wine from Bethlehem and the general Palestine region. The importer told us that the wine culture there is some thousand years old (which of course it is, at least there is a tradition to turn water to wine ;-)); but he also said that some grape farmers are growing grapes [again] that are as genetically close to the grapes from said water-to-wine era as possible.

(I would love to give a citation, but couldn't find one within 2 minutes - so take this as hear-say; though the importer, which is a good friend of a good friend, seemed to be not the kind of person to make this up)

If anyone is interested there's a 450 years+ old wine still growing: https://www.slovenia.info/en/places-to-go/attractions/world-...

And the oldest in the US is growing on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

http://www.themothervine.com

>Meanwhile, the pathogens that prey on grapes have continued to evolve, leading to major pesticide use

warning bells went off when reading this: it looks like wine industry as it is now is unsustainable

If you're worried about the wine industry you'd better brace yourself: the entire planet as it is now is unsustainable.

Most varieties of plants used for crops, fruits, flowers, etc. have been so heavily selected by us over thousands of years that they are completely artificial and would not survive long in the wild.

It does not mean that it isn't sustainable. Just that we are required.

It is a pity to see you being voted down, since the use of pesticides in the wine industry (in volumes which exceed some of the other agricultural industries that give consumers pause) has been a matter of fairly broad public concern for a few years now, see e.g. [0][1][2]

I feel fortunate that in my country, wines in the production of which pesticides were not used, are readily available and for comparable prices to the other wines. In many markets, however, consumers do not have that choice.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/opinion/pesticides-in-fre... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/dining/in-france-pesticid... [2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/wine/whic...

Same here in Montenegro. I don't know whether pesticides are used by commercial wineries, but grapes just grows naturally here with very little maintenance, not requiring any pesticides.

I would think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglianico would be older still.

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