The Sumoll is a black grape variety. It is a rustic variety, native from the Penedès region in

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...

(EU), drought resistant and with uniform development. The grape is long and big. It is used to produce red, white, rosé wines and cava (Catalan form of Champagne, the so-called Traditional Method). Its former presence is also evident in the number of different names in Catalan dialects: sumoi, chimoi, saumoll, somoi, sumoy, ximoll, somoll, ximoy, xemoll, among others. The name is related to the local slang term sumollar, which means maturing or withering, from the Latin verb ''submolliare''. Young

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

from Sumoll grape has a slight roughness that disappears with aging. Its production is low and treatment for achieving quality wines requires high skills in wine production. Before and after

phylloxera Grape phylloxera is an insect pest of commercial grapevines worldwide, originally native to eastern North America. Grape phylloxera (''Daktulosphaira vitifoliae'' (Fitch 1855) belong to the family Phylloxeridae, within the order Hemiptera, bugs ...

, the Sumoll was a variety of black grape widely grown throughout Catalonia.Josep M. Puiggròs i Jové
«Seguint les petjades de la varietat sumoll»
Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 2010 The entrance to the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

in 1986 accelerated discredit of local varieties, which were not considered able to make good & competitive wines.Josep M. Puiggròs i Jové
«Documentació històrica del sumoll-sumoi»
in: ''La varietat sumoll'', 2012, page 27 It has been replaced by other varieties and nowadays its culture is rare, with less than one hundred hectares planted (247 acres). This trend has begun to change within the last years. Wine growers are starting to recover and appreciate this variety, as they see an opportunity to create original wines that differentiate themselves by creating their own specialties, gaining a distance from the big industrial companies using only the stocks of international ubiquitous fashionable types -

Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Sauvignon () is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Australia and British Columbia, Canada to Lebanon' ...

Merlot Merlot is a dark blue–colored wine grape variety, that is used as both a blending grape and for varietal wines. The name ''Merlot'' is thought to be a diminutive of ''merle'', the French name for the blackbird, probably a reference to the ...

Chardonnay Chardonnay (, , ) is a green-skinned grape variety used in the production of white wine. The variety originated in the Burgundy wine region of eastern French wine, France, but is now grown wherever wine is produced, from English wine, Englan ...

.Malena Fabregat
«Sumoll, autòctona i clandestina»
''Gourmet's,'' El Periódico.com s.d. The Sumoll is one of the varieties referred by the following DOs (regional certificate of origin authorities), Catalunya, Pla de Bages, Tarragona. In Australia four crossings have been created from Cabernet Sauvignon and Sumoll: ''

Cienna Cienna is a red Australian wine grape variety first harvested in 2000. It is a mix between the Spanish wine grape Sumoll and Cabernet Sauvignon grape. This grape was initially created in 1972 by CSIRO. The aim was to produce high quality grapes s ...

'', ''Vermillion'', ''Rubienne'', and ''Tyrian''. The purpose of this crossing is to adapt Sumoll qualities to suit the Australian climate. Using the synonym Vijariego Negro, to which it has been shown to be genetically identical, it is an authorised variety in a number of the Canary Islands DOPs, and the Spanish mainland Pla de Bages DOP.

Sumoll Blanc Sumoll Blanc is a white grape variety, native to Tarragona in Catalonia, Spain. Although it shares its name with the red grape variety Sumoll, it is genetically unrelated.J. Robinson, J. Harding and J. Vouillamoz ''Wine Grapes - A complete guide ...

is a white variety that is genetically unrelated.J. Robinson, J. Harding and J. Vouillamoz ''Wine Grapes - A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours''

Bibliography

La varietat sumoll
Institució Catalana d'Estudis Agraris, 2012, 76 pages, downloadable.
Què diuen del sumoll
Anthology of texts by several writers on sumoll.

References

{{Wine by country Spanish wine Grape varieties of Spain Red wine grape varieties