Comments on: Harlan II – Field trip

By: Jacob

Jacob — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:31:24 +0000

You forget Montenegro, where they also found Zinfandel under the name Kratosija.

From Montenegro to Austria you have an area roughly the size of the entire state of California.

And perhaps even more… The absence of evidence of not the same as the evidence of absence.

By: Evil Fruit Lord

Evil Fruit Lord — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:46:58 +0000

Well…depends how you define “much broader area”. Croatia, Hungary, and Austria don’t exactly constitute a gigantic region.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:39:21 +0000

This paper suggests varieties related to Zinfandel are present in a much broader area. Just as I would guess. This team was from Italy and Montenegro. I guess an element of "terroir" was important in hypothesis formulation...

By: Evil Fruit Lord

Evil Fruit Lord — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:57:41 +0000

Oh, and as far as searching more intensively among other Southern European vines–most of southern Europe’s cultivars had already been pretty exhaustively fingerprinted molecularly by the time the Crljenak connection came along. Only the relative obscurity of the eastern cultivars delayed it this long.

The only major synonym of Zinfandel I know of outside of Croatia is Primitivo (also known as Morellone or Uva di Corato), which is an Italian variety. However there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of Primitivo in Italy before 1860.

By: Evil Fruit Lord

Evil Fruit Lord — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:43:48 +0000

Grapes got dragged around Europe a lot, and even where there are wild vines I'm sure they've got centuries of intercrossing with cultivated varieties, so I'm not sure there's any way to say with any certainty where Zinfandel/Crljenak Kasteljanski came from. However, the abstract of Meredith's paper ( MaletiÃ¦ et al), which is all I can afford of it, says that many alleles in Zinfandel were more common among Croatian vinifera than among vinifera in general. That at least suggests that it or its relatives had been there for a long while.

By: Another Blasted Weblog » Blog Archive » Nourishing arguments

Another Blasted Weblog » Blog Archive » Nourishing arguments — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:13:57 +0000

[...] blogging for us over at the other place, he plonked his money down to worship at the temple. His verdict? Chez Panisse is passÃ© now. Go look somewhere else. [...]

By: RH

RH — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:37:37 +0000

I have not seen Meredith’s paper but I agree that there is likely some more phylo-geographic and historical research that you need to do if your really want to nail this down. Let’s talk about that some day over a glass of Croatian wine (Assuming they are available, I do not think I have ever had or seen one).

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:57:34 +0000

Nice story, the footnote about Napa vines being a Croatian variety. The discoverer wouldn't order a Zinfandel wine, though ("not a drop of it"). Like with the Carolina Gold story, I am very suspicious of these kinds of discoveries. How do we know a variety originates from any place (or is "indigenous")? I wondered what would happen if we searched more intensively in Southern Europe. Perhaps we find dozens of clones of this same variety. Or the Croatian one is only a remnant of a variety that had a much wider distribution before? Now that's the geographer in me speaking. But in terms of terroir, perhaps "kastel(j)anski" doesn't refer to Kastela (Croatia) but to Castilla? By the way, the top models told me they are still waiting for a response.