CLONES?

(Q) What is a grape Clone?

(A) Most people are familiar with many different grape varietals such as Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, but many people are not aware that most varietals have several different clones. What is a grape clone you may ask? To quote Jancis Robinson, " Clone in a viticultural contex is a propagation from cuttings or buds from a single mother vine by deliberate clonal selections." The most popular varietals for using specific clones in the US are the Burgundian varietals. The most common Oregon Pinot Noir clones are Dijon (which has several clones of its own), Pommard and Wadenswil. Each clone will give the wine certain characterics and most winemakers blend different clones in order to achieve the desired results. (from In Good Taste newsletter)

From Professional Friends of Wine article on clones: If cuttings of a vine are taken and transplanted in several locations, each having different growing conditions, each young vine will adapt itself and its habits to the new environment. This “cloning” of vines accounts for a great deal of the spread of wine varieties from one place to another, and the change in form and habit explains why there is so much confusion over whether one named variety is related to another. (The mapping of DNA will, no doubt, undo a lot of the confusion about the ancestry of various grape varieties. Recently it was established that the mysterious and elegant Zinfandel is genetically identical to Primitivo from Apulia in Italy and that both of them are descended from a common Croatian ancestor.)

This kind of variability doesn’t involve genetic change: it’s simply a matter of a different expression in each environment of the vine’s genetic potential. But grapes also have a remarkable tendency to develop spontaneous genetic mutations, or bud sports. A vine that usually produces small berries may all of a sudden produce a bud whose berries are huge. The black-fruited Gamay vine sometimes produces branches with white grapes. Seedless table grapes are also the result of such a bud sport. This is true genetic change, and the resultant growth can itself be cloned, producing a new variety. As wine making becomes more international, winegrowers are looking to the ability to clone these random mutations has enabled them to grow established grape varieties in new areas. New strains of Pinot Noir, for instance have been cloned from bud sports of the Burgundian originals and planted in places, like California where Pinot never did well. A clone of Pinot Grigio (itself a clone of Pinot Noir) called Rulander shows more fruitiness than its parent. It takes a long time before a cloned vine gives fruit and longer still for the wine to be fairly evaluated, so progress is slow. The expense involved means that innovators are going to be conservative and cautious (no wasabi-scented pinot grigio for instance). But thanks to cloning, we can look forward to better wine from newer wine regions.

So I guess that not all grapes are created equal!