Baroque (often spelled Barroque) is a white

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 Ameri ...

grape A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus '' Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years a ...

planted primarily in South West France around the Tursan region. It can make full bodied wines with nutty flavors.J. Robinson ''Jancis Robinson's Wine Course'' Third Edition pg 100 Abbeville Press 2003

Ampelographer Ampelography ( ἄμπελος, "vine" + γράφος, "writing") is the field of botany concerned with the identification and classification of grapevines, ''Vitis'' spp. Traditionally this has been done by comparing the shape and colour of the ...

s suspect that the grape maybe a crossing of

Folle Blanche Folle blanche, also known as Picpoule, Gros Plant, and Enrageat blanc, is a wine grape variety from southwest France. It was the traditional grape variety in Cognac and Armagnac production until the 20th century. Folle blanche is an offspring ...

(which it shares the

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are al ...

''Bordeleza zuria'' with) and

Sauvignon blanc is a green-skinned grape variety that originates from the Bordeaux region of France. The grape most likely gets its name from the French words ''sauvage'' ("wild") and ''blanc'' ("white") due to its early origins as an indigenous grape in ...

.Oz Clarke ''Encyclopedia of Grapes'' pg 42 Harcourt Books 2001

History

While the exact origins of the grape are not clear, ampelographers believe it may be descended from a crossing of the French white grapes Folle Blanche and Sauvignon blanc. While it was once grown throughout southwest France, today its plantings are primarily isolated to the Landes department which contains ''

Vin délimité de qualité supérieure Vin délimité de qualité supérieure ("delimited wine of superior quality"), usually abbreviated as VDQS, was the second highest category of French wine, below '' appellation d'origine contrôlée'' (AOC) in rank, but above ''vin de pays'' (coun ...

'' (VDQS) wine region of Tursan. In the 20th century, Baroque gained favor among vine growers because of its resistance to

powdery mildew Powdery mildew is a fungal disease that affects a wide range of plants. Powdery mildew diseases are caused by many different species of ascomycete fungi in the order Erysiphales. Powdery mildew is one of the easier plant diseases to identify, a ...

which decimated many other

grape varieties 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 V ...

. However, by the 1980s the grape was virtually on the edge of

extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the Endling, last individual of the species, although the Functional ext ...

because of the ripping out of vineyards in the Landes and converting the land to other agricultural and development enterprises.J. Robinson (ed) ''"The Oxford Companion to Wine"'' Third Edition pg 65 Oxford University Press 2006 Wine historian and expert

Jancis Robinson Jancis Mary Robinson OBE, ComMA, MW (born 22 April 1950) is a British wine critic, journalist and wine writer. She currently writes a weekly column for the ''Financial Times'', and writes for her website JancisRobinson.com, updated daily. She ...

notes that Baroque was saved from extinction by the efforts of chef

Michel Guérard Michel Guérard (; born 27 March 1933) is a French chef, author, one of the founders of ''nouvelle cuisine'', and the inventor of ''cuisine minceur''. Early life and education Michel Guérard was born in 1933 in the Paris suburb of Vétheuil. At ...

, owner of the 3 star Michelin rated restaurant ''Les Prés d'Eugénie'' in

Eugénie-les-Bains Eugénie-les-Bains (; oc, Las Aigas) is a commune in the Landes department, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, southwestern France. Eugénie-les-Bains is best known for housing a spa resort and three restaurants, all belonging to chef Michel Guérard, invent ...

. At the Tursan wine estate owned by himself and his wife, Guérard revived interest in the variety by producing an aromatic full-bodied Baroque-based that critics have described as "characterful".

Wine region

The grape is almost exclusive to the South West France wine region of Tursan, with very little plantings of the grape to be found elsewhere in the world.

Wines

Baroque produces a full-bodied wine with noticeable

alcohol level Alcohol by volume (abbreviated as ABV, abv, or alc/vol) is a standard measure of how much alcohol (ethanol) is contained in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage (expressed as a volume percent). It is defined as the number of millilitres (mL) o ...

s and

weight In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity. Some standard textbooks define weight as a vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weight as a scalar qua ...

. It shares many of the same aroma characteristics as Sauvignon blanc.

Synonyms

Over the years, Baroque has had several synonyms including: Barake, Baroca, Baroke, Barroque, Blanc Bordelais, Bordelais, Bordelais blanc, Bordeleza zuria, Boudales, Bourdales, Claverie blanc, Escripet folle, Muscadelle de Nates, Petit Bordelais, Plant Bordelais and Sable blanc.Vitis International Variety Catalogue '
Baroque
"'' Accessed: December 14th, 2009

References

{{reflist White wine grape varieties