If you’re reading this column, you surely know the names of the famous wine grapes Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and so on. Wine drinkers are going to have to learn new ones, however, and not just the hundreds of indigenous vines that in this century growers have been identifying and celebrating all over the wine world to add variety, history and authenticity to the range of wines available.
All the vines mentioned above belong to the European grapevine species, Vitis vinifera. But the (relative) newcomer vines to which I refer are hybrids of vinifera varieties and members of other species of the Vitis genus, North American and/or Asian.
Grape breeders have been experimenting with crossing (same species) and hybridising (different species) vines for at least a couple of centuries, notably in North America. In Europe, near Montpellier, Louis Bouschet, followed by his son Henri, was at it even before the arrival of the phylloxera insect from across the Atlantic that devastated the vineyards of Europe in the late 19th century, making the hybridiser’s work more urgent.
Vinifera vines, which had already fallen prey to the fungal diseases downy and powdery mildew, like phylloxera imported unwittingly on transatlantic steamships, proved disastrously susceptible to this North American chewer of grapevine roots. It would perhaps have been logical to replace them with resistant North American varieties but that would hardly have found favour with Europe’s wine establishment – especially since wine made from many of them tasted so very different from European wine, with the slightly rank aroma a bit like essence of wild strawberries that can be found today in American Concord grape juice.
Eventually, and not without considerable objections, a solution to the phylloxera crisis was found: to graft vinifera vines on to American rootstocks, retaining European flavours and characteristics in the wines they produced. Such grafted vines are responsible for the vast majority of wine made throughout the wine world today.
Early European hybridisers of European and American varieties tended to breed grapevines for productivity rather than wine quality, often adding a red-fleshed variety to the genetic mix in order to counter the pale colour of wine made by France’s then-dominant Aramon grape. This of course gave hybrids a bad name and the appellation contrôlée regulations of the early twentieth century specifically banned them from these superior wines. Hybride became a dirty word associated with the sort of thin, cheap plonk drunk (in quantity) by the poor in the twentieth century.
But a new century has brought new challenges. And, thanks to climate change, whole new wine regions. Vineyards are currently proliferating throughout Scandinavia, Poland and the Baltic states, but they experience a much shorter growing season than vineyards further south. So they need vine varieties that will put up with harsh winters, and bud later and ripen earlier than traditional European ones. Genes from Vitis amurensis, a vine species able to withstand Mongolian winters, can be especially useful here, as Latvia’s energetic grape breeders have found.
But the northern European climate is relatively wet, too, which dramatically increases the risk of the fungal diseases, including rot, to which grapevines are prone. Enter Rondo and, especially, the even more disease-resistant Regent, dark-skinned hybrids developed in Germany in the 1960s. They are now grown for red wines in Scandinavia, Benelux, Britain, and Germany, where there are nearly 2,000 ha (5,000 acres) of Regent. In an age when the weather is ever less predictable, and consumers ever less enthusiastic about the agrochemicals that have been used widely to combat fungal diseases, varieties that are naturally disease-resistant and need far fewer sprayings, and less tractor activity, seem to be the answer.
But EU wine lawmakers had a problem. Hybrids, no longer dogged by off-putting flavours, were officially regarded as infra dig, so the regulations had to be changed to allow these new varieties (not officially known as hybrids but as ‘disease-resistant varieties’, or PiWis in German, an understandable abbreviation for Pilzwiderstandsfähige Rebsorten) into appellation wines. Not that this is a blanket exemption; each disease-resistant variety has to be officially approved for each appellation.
Examples that are especially popular already in Scandinavia include Phoenix, bred in Germany in 1964 and the very first disease-resistant variety to be approved for quality wine production, in 1992. Solaris, bred in 1975, has also been widely planted in the far north of Europe while Souvignier Gris, another German hybrid, seems to be gaining ground not just in Germany but also in France.
There is another problem. How will consumers accept all these new names? (A new book from Montpellier researchers, Vignes tolérantes aux maladies fongiques (Éditions France Agricole, 2024) available so far only in French, lists more than 300 hybrids grown for wine production, and that list excludes one or two mentioned in this article.)
Congratulations to Tesco, which last August introduced its first wine, a light, floral £8 white, made exclusively from one of these disease-resistant varieties. Floréal vines were released for commercial production as recently as 2018 and are currently grown in the Languedoc and the Loire. The UK supermarket was bold enough to label the wine Tesco Finest Floréal. Much is made of the vine’s resistance not just to the two mildews but also black rot, a particular threat in wet weather. Admittedly, Floréal is a rather pretty name but, according to a Tesco spokesperson, sales have been strong, ‘and we look forward to watching Floréal continue to build on its initial popularity with customers’.
There are pockets of wine production around the world, especially in North America, where hybrids have long been grown and whose local consumers have become used to their names – perhaps neither knowing nor caring that they are hybrids, being free of European prejudice. Eastern Canada used to be much colder than it is now and hybrids such as Baco Noir, Maréchal Foch and especially Vidal Blanc have pleased growers and wine drinkers there for many years. La Crescent, La Crosse, Marquette and the cleverly named Gewürztraminer-like Traminette, all successful products of breeders in the Midwest, have proved popular in the US, not just locally. And the state of Virginia has its very own, very respectable and historic hybrid, the red wine grape Norton, named after the man who discovered it growing near Richmond in 1820.
The damp climate of Brazil’s premier wine-growing region Serra Gaúcha has required ingenuity. Several hybrids such as Lorena, Margot and Moscato Embrapa whose wine tastes vinifera-like have been developed there. Japan’s humid summers also mean that vinifera vines can struggle. The country’s famous Koshu vine is almost certainly a hybrid, even if its precise genetic make-up is not yet certain.
Russia’s and Crimea’s intensely cold winters inspired grape breeders long ago, while hybrids have been especially common in Moldova.
Until recently, new varieties in France – mainly from Montpellier and more recently from Bordeaux – have tended to be all-vinifera crossings such as Caladoc and Marselan rather than hybrids of two different species. The French have been relatively slow to develop disease-resistant hybrids and so far only Floréal, Voltis, Selenor and Opalor have been approved for white-wine production and Artaban, Vidoc, Coliris, Lilaro and Sirano for reds. Note that these names have no relation to any famous grape name. Apparently, French lobbyists are trying to prevent naming any new variety after a well-known grape, however closely it may be related to one.
The Italians have been much more creative, and consumer-friendly. The famous Rauscedo nursery in north-east Italy has been an active breeder of disease-resistant vines, calling them (registered) names such as Cabernet Cortis, Pinot Kors and Sauvignon Nepis (which I was told in New Zealand was being considered by Cloudy Bay), all of these names referring to the established vinifera variety that was hybridised. These names will surely be an easier sell to a tradition-bound wine-drinking public than the French names, many of which sound more suitable for a pharmacy than a wine shop.
In a vineyard in the cool, wet climate of Denmark recently I was able to compare the performance of spindly, yellow-leaved vinifera Riesling with the healthy, luxuriant, bright green, photosynthesis-promoting leaves of disease-resistant Phoenix planted in the next row (in the foreground of the picture above). The vine-grower, Søren Hartvig Jensen of Kelleris winery, explained that Solaris is already showing a dangerous lack of resistance to some fungal diseases, highlighting the need for breeders to be ever-vigilant about new threats to vine health. Jensen reported that in Denmark alone they are researching 40 new varieties, and over the next 10 years will choose those that pollinate well and will make the best wine.
A rather important consideration.
Some superior wines from hybrid vines
Sparkling
Komorebi, Solaris Brut 2022 Norway 12.5%
About £32 if bought at the winery as part of a tour
Kelleris, Utopia Renée Rosé (Rondo) 2018 Denmark 12%
349 Danish kroner from the winery
Breaky Bottom, Cuvée Koizumi Yakumo Seyval Blanc 2010 England 12%
£54.62 Corney & Barrow
Whites
Tesco Finest Floréal 2023 Vin de France 11.5%
£8 Tesco
Jesper Friberg, Fjälltopp Solaris 2020 Sweden 14%
350 Swedish kronor Systembolaget
Lakićević Solaris 2022 Kosovo 13.5%
£30 Hic!
Inniskillin, Gold Vidal Icewine 2021 Niagara Peninsula, Ontario 9.5%
£44 per half bottle London End
Reds
Sauvage, Cabernet Cortis 2022 Vin de France 12.5%
£11.95 The Wine Society
White Castle, Regent 2020 Wales 11%
The 2022 is £27.99 Fine Wines Direct
Tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates in our tasting notes database. Some international stockists on Wine-Searcher.com but the Scandinavian wines may be easier to find at the wineries themselves.
See also Julia's 2016 article Vine breeding – worth all that effort?
