Syrah's Parentage Linked to Pinot Noir

Italian researchers have discovered evidence that the progenitor of Pinot Noir, Burgundy's famed red grape, may also be an ancestor of Syrah, the Rhône Valley red grape that has flourished in many of the world's major wine regions.

The finding came as a byproduct of research into the interrelationships between the grape varieties of southern France and northern Italy, conducted by the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the Istituto Agrario di San Michele all'Adige in Trentino, Italy.

Initially, researchers José Vouillamoz (who also uncovered the parentage of the Italian grapes Sangiovese and Nebbiolo) and Stella Grando uncovered a clear-cut genetic link between the grape varieties of the two regions. By analyzing DNA markers of six different grape varieties--three of them French (Dureza, Syrah and Pinot) and three of them Italian (Teroldego, Lagrein and Marzemino)--the researchers discovered what Vouillamoz termed "the first evidence of a genetic link between grapes across the Alps."

The researchers, whose findings will be published in the Genetic Society's peer-reviewed journal Heredity, discovered a clear relationship between Dureza, a workhorse grape variety of France's Ardeche region and one of the parents of Syrah, and Teroldego, the red grape grown in Trentino. "Dureza and Teroldego turned out to be full siblings," said Vouillamoz.

That relationship came as no great surprise to Vouillamoz and Grando, since they had expected to find some connections between the grape cultivars of the two regions, which have long enjoyed political, social, agricultural and cultural exchange.

But the big surprise came when the two scientists, using the same DNA techniques, uncovered a probable connection between Pinot cultivated in western Europe and Syrah. (All modern members of the Pinot group, including Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc, are color mutations of a single grape variety referred to today as Pinot.) In short, it appears that Pinot, which may have been grown since the 14th century, is a "great-grandparent" of Syrah.

"We reconstructed the most likely pedigree that revealed a third-degree relationship between the worldwide-cultivated 'Pinot' from Burgundy and 'Syrah' from the Rhône Valley," said Vouillamoz. "Our finding was totally unsuspected by classical ampelography, and it challenges the commonly assumed independent origins of these grape cultivars." (Ampelography is the science of identifying grape varieties using visual reference points such as leaf shape, fruit and stems.)

"We looked at 60 different DNA regions scattered throughout the 19 chromosomes that are present in each cell of a grapevine," Vouillamoz added. "This gives us a general picture of the whole genome of every grape variety investigated."

One of the reasons the relationship was totally unsuspected is that Pinot and Syrah bear little resemblance to each other. Harold Olmo, professor emeritus of viticulture at University of California, Davis, who for many years was California's authority on varietal identification, said he would have found the relationship "unlikely" given the great visual dissimilarities between the two varieties.