Grape Revivals

With passion, vision and perseverance, winemakers are betting big on almost extinct grapes.

WORDS Kathleen Willcox

Go into any wine store in the world and ask for a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay, and even at the most humble or rigorously curated shop, you’ll likely have dozens of options.

Of the 5.47 billion bottles of wine that get sold in the U.S. every year, you can be sure that the lion’s share belong to Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and the 11 other widely planted wine grapes covering more than one-third of the world’s total vineyard area, according to the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV).

Just 33 varieties occupy 50 percent of the world’s vines. Because there are around 10,000 known grape species, that means around a third of one percent of the planet’s available species of grapes are taking up half of the space available­ to them.

Aside from the obvious downsides of the ascent of apex grapes—the absence of pleasure inherent in exploring novel and varied flavors and aromas being one—there are more subtle, but in many ways, much more serious disadvantages.

Growing a limited number of crops—even a limited variety within one crop—across the world increases the risks of disease and pest outbreaks. Just look at the banana. While there are more than 1,000 varieties of bananas, only one—the Cavendish—dominates commercial production, and it is being decimated by a fungal disease that is threatening worldwide production, a $25 billion industry which around 400 million people rely on for food and nutritional security, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Relying on a small handful of grape varieties also means winemakers are more vulnerable to climate change. A grim new report from the intergovernmental World Meteorological Organization titled the State of the Global Climate 2022 reminded the world of the accumulating evidence of climate change: from record-breaking glacier melt in Europe, to sea ice disappearing in Antarctica, to an uptick in deadly storms and the ever increasing average global temperatures. Warming conditions, extreme weather and severe drought threaten up to 85 percent of our current wine-grape acreage, according to a study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There is, thankfully, a but and an if tucked between the doom and the gloom: By increasing the number of grape varieties grown, producers will spread the risk of disease outbreaks and cultivate grapes that can thrive on a warming and more wild planet.

Why and how? We spoke to winegrowers who have set out to grow almost-extinct grapes for a range of cultural, environmental and economic reasons.

Mullineux, South Africa

Honoring Heritage and the Future

Carefully curated variety defines winemaking at Mullineux, located in the Swartland region of South Africa. Across 125 acres, 14 varieties thrive, including several lesser-known varieties like Garnacha Peluda and Clairette Blanche alongside well-known grapes like Syrah, Chenin Blanc, Cinsault and Grenache Noir.

But Mullineux’s Semillon Gris grown across 7.5 acres are what makes Winemaker Andrea Mullineux really tick.

“Semillon Gris has been recognized since the 1800s in South Africa,­ but it wasn’t recognized as an official variety until very recently,”­ Mullineux explains. “Since 2013, we have been working on propagating it and registering Semillon Gris as an official variety. In 2022, we planted our first official Semillon Gris vineyard on our property.”

Next year, Mullineux hopes to harvest the grapes and make a wine that will be registered to “complete the official process of making Semillon Gris a registered variety.”

She sees highlighting the grape as an official nod to South Africa’s winemaking past—and an insurance policy for its future.

“Semillon was one of the original varieties planted in the Cape in the 1600s,” Mullineux says. “By 1822, it made up 93.7 percent of the total 21 million vines planted. But by the mid-1800s, more than half had mutated to Semillon Gris. Post-phylloxera, replantings were dominated by a greater variety of vines, including more Chenin Blanc and Cinsault.”

Mullineux believes that Semillon Gris, which evolved in South Africa to thrive in the slowly changing climate, is better equipped to deal with the extremes that have become a part of life for so many of us.

“The wet years are wetter, the dry years are dryer and so on,” she says. “Heritage varieties and ones that through natural and massal selection [propagated from cutting of old vines] have developed over a few hundred years are survivors.”

In the glass, Mullineux’s gently pressed and barrel-aged Semillon Gris offers citrusy notes walking toward the savory side, with saffron and tannic undertones.

“Those subtle, tannic undertones keep the wine lifted and tasting just more-ish,” says Mullineux.

A Sarigo vine thriving at Esporão in Portugal / Courtesy Esporão

As of now, for red wine grapes, Winemaker João Ramos says that Espadeiro, Marufo, Cabernet Franc and Tinta Caiada are most promising. For white wine grapes, Ramos favors Malvasia Fina, Dona Branca, Sarigo, Fernão Pires, Bical and Cercial.

But progress doesn’t happen overnight, Ramos says. It may take a few years before the fruit of their labor can be tasted by any of us.

“We are still working with all of them, and we don’t sell them,” he says. “Yet.”

Cerro Chapeu, Uruguay

In Search of a Vibrant Powerhouse

Tannat was born in Southwest France, but has taken over Uruguay, now accounting for 27 percent of the country’s 14,804 acres of grapes under vine, according to Uruguay Wine. But as much as Francisco Carrau, founder of Uruguay’s Cerro Chapeu, adores this burly red grape, he has become increasingly concerned for its future amid the changing climate—and changing tastes.

Tannat is rich and opulent, known for delivering intense black-currant and red-plum flavors, with notes of smoked meat and spice—ideal for standing up to the classic barbecued meat-heavy cuisine in Uruguay. (The country is one of the top meat producers in the world, raising their animals free-range on grass, with more cattle than human citizens.) Warmer temperatures underline and concentrate Tannat’s intense flavors and deliver higher alcohol levels.

“We wanted to find a fresher, livelier wine with lower alcohol that still shared many of the characteristics of Tannat,” says Carrau. In an academic paper, the team read about the relatively unknown Manseng Noir, which shares half of its genome with Tannat.

Manseng Noir was rediscovered in Southwestern France in 2000, and replanted by Producteurs Plaimont, a cooperative that was reportedly struggling to produce Tannat that was less than 16 percent alcohol by volume (abv). In 2015, Plaimont released its first commercial vintage from Manseng Noir.

Cerro Chapeu imported their first plantings of the vine in 2019.

“We just bottled the first 1,000 bottles of single-varietal Manseng Noir,” says Carrau, adding that the vineyard team is doubling its plantings from 1.2 to 2.5 acres. “Plaimont has 100 acres planted now, and we are the first vineyard outside of France with this variety. In the glass, it’s fresh, lower in alcohol,” though without losing the exuberant red and black fruit flavors for which Tannat is beloved.

Lighter, brighter—but still powerful.

“I think Manseng Noir has a big future in Uruguay,” says Carrau. The wine, he says, is slated to be imported into the U.S. “soon.”

The Castell de la Bleda vineyard, with Moneu vines, at Familia Torres in Penedès, Spain / Courtesy Familia Torres

“He decided to start looking for lost vines more than 40 years ago,” Torres says. “It started like a philanthropic project, helping to recover the viticultural heritage of Catalonia.”

Miguel A. began reaching out to winegrowers and farmers across the company through simple, small ads in newspapers.

“We asked them to contact us if they came across an old vine and didn’t know what it was,” Torres recalls. “We were not expecting many calls, but we had many—and we still get them every year. Our team and a specialist on ampelography check the vine and if they can’t work out what it is, then we extract the DNA from the plant. If it doesn’t match any of the known varieties from the largest database which is at the University of Montpellier, then we have discovered an ancestral variety.”

This detective work garnered more than 50 previously unknown varieties. But then the real work began. Each potential variety went through a rigorous growing process to determine if they were infected with viruses, and if not, if they could produce interesting and delicious grapes. In some cases, it took 15 years from recovering a variety to receiving a greenlight from the government to be able to use it in a commercial wine.

Over the decades, the mission has evolved.

“When we started to realize that some of the ancestral varieties we were recovering had both a great potential for winemaking and the capacity to adapt to climate change we—members of the fifth generation—decided to really focus on the project and on those varieties that would help us make wines for the future, such as Forcada, Moneu, Querol, Gonfaus, Garró or Pirene,” says Torres.

Of the six most-promising ancestral varieties that have emerged from the decades of experimentation, Torres says they all have excellent acidity and are generally late-ripening varieties—both essential qualities for surviving climate change. All told, around 250 acres of their vineyards are devoted to these almost-extinct grapes.

Torre Rosazza, Italy

Replanting to Culture and History

Torre Rosazza was once a medieval fortress, protecting the people inside from invaders from afar. Today, the Friuli winery is protecting its vineyards from the international grapes that did so much to transform winegrowing in Italy.

“Many indigenous varieties were pulled out here and across Italy to be replaced with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah,” says oenologist Giovanni Casati. “Today, we are rebuilding the old historical varieties, and in many cases, replacing the international varieties. Now, we see our role as honoring and preserving history and tradition. We want to tell the history of the region through wine.”

The project was born, ironically, just as the international invaders were flourishing.

“In 1978, the enologist Walter Filiputti found two Pignolo plants in the Rosazzo Abbey,” explains Casati. “He decided to replant them, and multiplied them year after year, until he reached 2,200 vines. The first harvest was in 1984.”

The late-ripening red grape has moderate resistance to drought and is intensely tannic, with bright red fruit and cherry flavors when young that deepen and become more complex with age. There can also be bramble and smoke in the mix.

Pignolo really hits its stride after a decade, says Casati.

Other growers took note of Pignolo’s prowess and began planting it. Today, it encompasses close to 200 acres across Friuli, with 60 growers now cultivating the variety. In 2023, the Associazione del Pignolo del Friuli Venezia Giulia was inaugurated, to celebrate the unexpected comeback of a delicious local variety.

Torre Rosazza began producing a singlevariety Pignolo and a red blend, called Ronco della Torre, with Pignolo and Merlot.