The first order of business for the Biblical patriarch Noah, once his ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat and he and the fam set their sandals down on dry land again, was to plant a vineyard. We are not told where the vines for this enterprise may have come from, but as an article of faith one needn’t inquire into it too closely.
It is perhaps something of a weakness in Holy Writ that it raises so many more questions of this sort than it answers. To address this we invented DNA sequencing, where biological history leaves its fingerprints.
In the last two decades, ampelographers (folks who study grapevines) have used the technique to clarify and organize the family tree of the wine vine, an extensive and unruly clan with members hither and yon. From the perspective of wine drinkers, the situation seems quite a bit tamer than it really is, since most would struggle to get very much farther than Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay if asked to name as many wine grape varieties as they could. While it’s true that this group dominates the commercial wine scene, in actuality something like a thousand varietals are regularly used to make wine today, though many of this number may be found only in tiny, obscure locales.*
The ultimate aim of all this genealogical sleuthing is to determine which, if any, among existing varietals can be identified as the parent of parents, the Mum of Mums. Your correspondent regrets to inform you that, so far at least, the search has not borne fruit. The best we have been able to do is identify some mildly surprising family connections.
Along these lines, The Oxford Companion to Wine mentions that Chardonnay appears to have emerged as a spontaneous cross between the red Pinot Noir and the white Gouais Blanc, and that the latter is known around research lab water coolers as “the Casanova of grapes” as a tribute to its numerous vinous liaisons and success in scattering its chromosomal riches far and wide.
The best we can say for now — and maybe ever — is that our dear old Ur-Mum, whoever and whatever she was, lives on as innumerable bits and bytes of bio-data buried in highly attenuated form in every bottle of supermarket plonk, every crystal decanter of first growth claret, and in everything in-between.
So here’s to you, Mum. We owe you everything.