Alicante Ganzin is a red

French wine French wine is produced all throughout France, in quantities between 50 and 60 million hectolitres per year, or 7–8 billion bottles. France is one of the largest wine producers in the world, along with Italian, Spanish, and Amer ...

grape variety This list of grape varieties includes cultivated grapes, whether used for wine, or eating as a table grape, fresh or dried (raisin, currant, sultana). For a complete list of all grape species including those unimportant to agriculture, see Viti ...

. Unlike most ''

Vitis vinifera ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine, is a species of flowering plant, native to the Mediterranean region, Central Europe, and southwestern Asia, from Morocco and Portugal north to southern Germany and east to northern Iran. There are curr ...

'' wine grapes, Alicante Ganzin is a

teinturier Teinturier grapes are grapes whose flesh and juice is red in colour due to anthocyanin pigments accumulating within the pulp of the grape berry itself. In most cases, anthocyanin pigments are confined to the outer skin tissue only, and the squee ...

with dark flesh that produces red juice. Most varieties used to produce red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, etc., have clear color flesh and juice with the

wine receiving its color The color of wine is one of the most easily recognizable characteristics of wines. Color is also an element in wine tasting since heavy wines generally have a deeper color. The accessory traditionally used to judge the wine color was the tastevin, ...

through a maceration process where the color seeps out of the grape skins for as long as they are in contact with the juice. Alicante Ganzin can thus produce light red and ''

rose A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be ...

'' colored wine without maceration. It is believed that Alicante Ganzin is often described as the progenitor of all French teinturier grapes.J. Robinson ''Jancis Robinson's Guide to Wine Grapes'' pg 22 Oxford University Press 1996

History

While Alicante Ganzin is believed by ampelographers to be the progenitor of all French teinturiers, the exact origins of the grape variety are not clear. Some, such as wine expert Jancis Robinson, describes the grape as a cross of

Alicante Bouschet Alicante Bouschet or Alicante Henri Bouschet is a wine grape variety that has been widely cultivated since 1866. It is a cross of Petit Bouschet (itself a cross of the very old variety Teinturier du Cher and Aramon) and Grenache.Vitis rupestris ''Vitis rupestris'' is a species of grape native to the United States that is known by many common names including July, Coon, sand, sugar, beach, bush, currant, ingar, rock, and mountain grape. It is used for breeding several French-American hy ...

'' variety and ''

'' grape Aramon known as ''Aramon Rupestris Ganzin No.4''. J. Robinson ''Vines Grapes & Wines'' pg 226 Mitchell Beazley 1986 This is the parentage attributed to the variety by the

Vitis International Variety Catalogue The Vitis International Variety Catalogue (VIVC) is a database of various species and varieties/cultivars of grapevine, the genus ''Vitis''. VIVC is administered by the Geilweilerhof Institute for Grape Breeding (''Institut für Rebenzüchtung Gei ...

, which date the grape's creation to 1886 by private grape breeder Victor Ganzin.Alicante Ganzin
,

, Accessed: February 21st, 2011

Offspring

In 1958,

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

viticulturist Dr.

Harold Olmo Harold Olmo (July 31, 1909 – June 30, 2006) was an American viticulturist and professor at the University of California, Davis where he created many new grape varieties known today as Olmo grapes. In the 1950s, he helped to establish Calif ...

crossed Alicante Ganzin with the

Portuguese wine Portuguese wine was mostly introduced by the Romans and other ancient Mediterranean peoples who traded with local coastal populations, mainly in the South. In pre-Roman Gallaecia-Lusitania times, the native peoples only drank beer and were unfami ...

grape variety Tinta Cão to produce the red-fleshed variety

Rubired Olmo grapes are wine and table grape varieties produced by University of California, Davis viticulturist Dr. Harold Olmo. Over the course of his nearly 50-year career, Dr. Olmo bred a wide variety of both grapes by means of both crossing varietie ...

that is often used a coloring agent in red wine blends. Olmo also used Alicante Ganzin to cross with the

Jura wine Jura may refer to: Places * Jura, Scotland, island of the Inner Hebrides off Great Britain *Jūra, river in Lithuania Mountain ranges * Jura Mountains, on the French–Swiss–German border *Franconian Jura, south-central Germany *Swabian Jura, ...

grape Trousseau gris to produce

Royalty Royalty may refer to: * Any individual monarch, such as a king, queen, emperor, empress, etc. * Royal family, the immediate family of a king or queen regnant, and sometimes his or her extended family * Royalty payment for use of such things as int ...

(VIVC)
Royalty
'' Accessed: August 17th, 2012

References

{{reflist Red wine grape varieties