On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 08:20:39 +0200
Mike Tommasi wrote:

Mark Lipton wrote:
John Gunn wrote:


I was at a Loire tasting with Joe Dressner one time. He discussed at
length his belief that grafted root stock selected for vigor produce wines
with higher alcohol. He believed this was a significant and often
overlooked aspect of style differences in wines.


I have heard this same from Mr. Dressner, and he has empirical data to
back it up: the ungrafted "Franc de Pieds" bottlings of Breton to
compare against their (grafted) Bourgueil.

I have heard the exact opposite from friends that make wine locally,
they have some ungrafted grenache that seems to have grown much faster
than the grafted vines that were planted in the same patch. After 4
years the ungrafted vines were ready to make wine, the others were not.
Everything seems to be more concentrated from the ungrafted vines...

go figure.


Well, some cultivars have more vigorous root stocks than others. There's
a sycamore cultivar that is layered to produce rootstock for less vigorous
variety, for example. It simply sounds as if cabernet franc root-stock
is less vigorous than grenache, or those varieties grown where these informal
experiments were performed.

From this last sentence I'll continue to say that it sounds as though,
properly speaking, grenache and it's synonyms are a grex, not clones
at all. I'll leave it to the botanists to argue whether this makes a
single cultivar or not (and I'm sure opinions will differ!)

But also, for whatever small differences that may exist between "versions",
it does sound as though the rootstock issues could be a dominant
factor in eventual quality. I wonder, does Tablas Creek use the same
rootstock as Beaucastel for their grenache cuttings?

-E

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Emery Davis
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