WineSearcher: Ungrafted Vines

Interesting article in WineSearcher:
WineSearcher:UngraftedVines
on wines produced from ungrafted vine. Their is an organization of European producers (France/Greece/Italy/Germany/CanaryIslands), Franc de Pied, who is supporting the promotion of wines from ungrafted vines. Of course, their are not a whole lot of vnyds over there of ungrafted vines. In their tasting, they found the wines from ungrafted vines were....surprise/surprise...better tasting.
Interesting that no US producers are involved.
Tom

[David M. Bueker]

As mentioned over on WB, it's a European initiative, so no surprise at all that it does not include US producers.

As for the wines tasting "better" that's subjective. Some do, some don't. I've been involved with a few blind tastings where FdP bottles were thrown into the mix against their non-FdP counterparts, and results were mixed. It's still an interesting discussion, but only a few cases where all the other variables are held constant to allow direct comparison of grafted versus un-grafted.

As I understand it, there are three categories of vineyards growing pure (non-hybrid) Vitis vinifera vines:

o Places where the phylloxera aphid has never been introduced. In Europe Santorini is one such place, and I think Crete is phylloxera-free, too. Chile is another area that's never been infested.

o Vineyards on sandy soils that phylloxera avoids. The ungrafted vines of California are in this category.

o Vineyards where proactive measures are taken to avoid and/or treat phylloxera infestation. This can be an expensive proposition. I think Quinta do Noval's Nacional vineyard is in this category.

So except for a few extremely high quality vineyards where it's economically feasible to fight off the vine pest, the ability to grow ungrafted vines is do to luck or by choice of the phylloxera bugs. I don't think wine quality factors into phylloxera's decisions whether or not to infest a vineyard.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

I don't think wine quality factors into phylloxera's decisions whether or not to infest a vineyard.

Of course it doesn't. That said there are many folks who claim that wines from un-grafted vines taste better. It's a very hard proposition to test, given the variables of site, winemaker, winemaking processes, etc. Not a lot of options for a controlled experiment.