Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
SIX
Crossings
Not all the
wines we drink are made
from naturally occurring
Vitis vinifera
grapevines. Some are born in laboratories
thanks to the ingenuity of men and women all
over the world who try to create,
ex novo,
varie-
ties that they hope will improve on the original
set of parents. A crossing occurs between two
varieties of the same species, while a hybrid is
obtained by crossing members of different spe-
cies (in the case of grapevines, this means
crossing a
vinifera
with another vine species
such as
rupestris
or
riparia
). In nature, hybrids
rarely survive and are often sterile, a mecha-
nism by which nature attempts to protect itself
from cross-species communions, such as a
tiger and a lion hitting it off or a lake trout and
brook trout mating. For example, in the latter
case, the offspring is called a splake or wen-
digo, and though it is also a very beautiful trout,
it's sterile. Crossing the huge but very slow-
growing lake trout with the much smaller but
quick-growing brook trout makes sense if the
result is a much bigger fi sh that grows rapidly.
Unfortunately, though splake grows fast and
can reach relatively big sizes, it has little or no
appeal for governments or commercial fi sher-
ies, since, being sterile, it's not self-sustainable.
There are countless similar examples in the
world of wine.
No matter how well intentioned human
beings are, it's hard to improve on Mother
Nature's work. The simple truth of the matter is
that neither wine crossings nor wine hybrids
have been extremely successful in creating high-
quality wine grapes. There are exceptions, and
in general, crossings have been much more suc-
cessful than hybrids, which are not found in
Italy at all. In fact, they're not even offi cially
allowed in Europe, save for some that have been
associated historically, or out of necessity, with
certain production zones, such as Baco Noir and
Armagnac in France. When they are allowed,
they can usually only qualify only as “table
wines” in those countries, rather than “quality
wines.” Generally speaking, hybrids today are
more abundant in countries with extreme
weather conditions where
Vitis vinifera
has trou-
ble surviving (for example, Vidal in Canada,
Seyval Blanc in the United Kingdom, and Johan-
niter in the Netherlands), and in situations
