Jancis Robinson has a new book out that is excerpted in the FT this weekend.
Looks quite interesting. It may be old news to you, but I was a bit tickled to learn that savagnin is a parent of sauvignon blanc, chenin, and GV.
Pinot has been getting around:
"One pedigree diagram that José has produced expressly for our book is so big that it has to be printed on a special three-page insert. On it is a family tree headed by Pinot and showing 156 wine grape varieties that are connected by parent-offspring relationships, including all 16 Pinot x Gouais Blanc progenies identified by Meredith’s and Boursiquot’s teams back in 1999 and, perhaps more surprisingly for wine devotees, Syrah/Shiraz, whose origins have been the subject of so much feverish speculation over the ages.
The Pinot family tree also shows exactly how it is related to what you might call the Cabernet cluster of varieties (Cabernets Franc and Sauvignon, Merlot, Cot/Malbec etc); how, via another mate, its partner the obscure Gouais Blanc is a parent of Hungary’s most famous grape variety; how via another partner Pinot begat Savagnin Blanc of the Jura, which turns out to be the parent of such famous and supposedly unrelated varieties as Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Grüner Veltliner, Verdelho and Petit Manseng."
The book is expensive, but discounted as pre-release in the link above.
Looks quite interesting. It may be old news to you, but I was a bit tickled to learn that savagnin is a parent of sauvignon blanc, chenin, and GV.
Pinot has been getting around:
"One pedigree diagram that José has produced expressly for our book is so big that it has to be printed on a special three-page insert. On it is a family tree headed by Pinot and showing 156 wine grape varieties that are connected by parent-offspring relationships, including all 16 Pinot x Gouais Blanc progenies identified by Meredith’s and Boursiquot’s teams back in 1999 and, perhaps more surprisingly for wine devotees, Syrah/Shiraz, whose origins have been the subject of so much feverish speculation over the ages.
The Pinot family tree also shows exactly how it is related to what you might call the Cabernet cluster of varieties (Cabernets Franc and Sauvignon, Merlot, Cot/Malbec etc); how, via another mate, its partner the obscure Gouais Blanc is a parent of Hungary’s most famous grape variety; how via another partner Pinot begat Savagnin Blanc of the Jura, which turns out to be the parent of such famous and supposedly unrelated varieties as Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Grüner Veltliner, Verdelho and Petit Manseng."
The book is expensive, but discounted as pre-release in the link above.