Sometimes it is difficult to know what grape variety you have in the vineyard or at home. For example, in Chile, people thought they had merlot in the vineyard until someone noticed that it didn’t quite look like and behave like merlot. It turned out that most of the merlot actually was carmenère.
The traditional way of figuring out the grape variety is to look at the morphology of the plant, the physical form and external structure. For example, the shape of the leaves, the shape and colour of branches, the grape bunches etc.
We’ve written about identifying grape varieties here. A legendary ampelographer (botanist specialised in grapevines) was Pierre Galet.
But if you want to figure out what grape variety you have in a vineyard or in your garden at home, there is an easier and more reliable method today. You look at the DNA of the plant.
That is, of course, not something anyone can do. But now, one of the great vine researchers and scientists are offering that as a service. José Vouillamoz is a Swiss authority on grape-vine study, and in particular its DNA. He is the co-author of the book Wine Grapes, the seminal contemporary work on the issue. He now offers to identify grape varieties from samples by using genetic DNA markers (microsatellites), for a fee, of course.
Read more about José’s work and also his grape identification services, and how you can contact him, here: josevouillamoz
