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Whether You Like It Dry, Sweet, or In Between, We Think You’re Going to Like Vignoles
Vitis vinifera grape (the standard grape species for wine making – in this case, the Vitis vinifera was a French Pinot Noir clone called Pinot de Corton) with another hybrid grape, one called Siebel 8665 (a cross between Vitis vinifera and a native North American grape). You might remember our last United Grape of America, Marechal Foch, being produced in the same manner. But while that grape was named by its creator after a famed French field marshal, this particular genetic cross-mingling initially bore only the name of its maker and the number of its order.
Let me explain: when dealing with grape hybridiztion, it’s customary for each newly produced grape to be initially named after the scientist who performed the breeding, and the number of the experiment (since not all experiments in cross-breeding succeed). Such was the case with Vignoles, which was originally called – and is still called by some growers and producers – Ravat 51 (FYI, I love that name; doesn’t Ravat 51 sounds like either some sort of classy wagering game you’d find in Monte Carlo or a fancy liqueur army officers would drink with aliens in a top-secret Air Force base in the Nevada desert?)
Ravat 51 was created in the 1920s by noted French hybridizer and grape breeder J.F. Ravat as his 51st (and most successful) hybridizing experiment. Ravat 51 was originally planted in France, primarily in the Cote d’Or region of Burgundy (where Ravat found his initial samples of Pinot de Corton for his hybrid) but it never quite caught on there (go figure) and the grape was banished to America and sent to live with its other parent, the Siebel hybrid created from a native American grape. There the grape quickly took root and began to thrive when farmers in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Midwest discovered that the grape would produce robustly even in their colder climates. Because of the grapes origins, these farmers started calling the wine produced by Ravat 51 “Vignoles,” after a small town just to the east of the Cote d’Or’s capital of Beaune. The drier version of Vignoles also had the crisp dry acidity of some of Burgundy’s Chardonnays and Aligotes, which may have lead to the change in name as well.
So the Ravat 51 became known as Vignoles and today is still celebrated and revered in these same non-traditional wine-growing areas (although let’s face it, we shouldn’t really call them non-traditional because the East Coast and Midwest has a long and storied tradition of wine growing and making; it just hasn’t quite gotten around as much as California or Oregon), and prized for three things: its late-harvesting nature, its high sugar levels balanced with strong acidity, and its ability to take on the noble rot of Botrytis and convert itself into a late-harvest sweet dessert wine. Vignoles is an incredibly versatile grape in that regard, though because of its long growing period, the buds on the vine open rather early (all the better to allow more sunlight and nutrients into the raisins over the course of the spring and summer) and are susceptible to late winter and early spring frosts. Also, because of its susceptibility to Botrytis, and because the grapes are so close to each other on each cluster, there is the chance of rot during vintages with lots of rain and high humidity.
But other than that, Vignoles is hearty and robust and incredibly versatile. It’s truly the not-so-hidden gem of the Midwest, like that gorgeous prom queen or dairy/rutabega/soy bean pageant princess that you can just tell would be a global sensation if only she could break out of her small town and finally get noticed by someone...
Well, here’s your chance to help her out and help her get noticed, smart guy (or girl). Read on to learn about the wonders of this fantastic Midwestern teasure and do your part to try it out and spread the word. You don’t even have to leave your comfy seat by the beach or your cool urban-hipster loft-style dwelling or set foot in a red state by any means. Just give this week’s Forgotten Grape Vignoles a chance, and she’ll reward you tenfold.
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What It Looks Like, What It Smells Like, and What It Tastes Like
Both sweet and drier versions of Vignoles have similar scent profiles, with the sweeter wines also giving off more of a honey or sweet fruit syrup aroma to them. But you’ll typically find lots of flowers on the nose of a Vignoles as well as fruits ranging from more stone (apricots and peaches) to tarter (such as green apples and even pineapple). If there’s been additional malolactic fermentation, you’ll also get a slight whiff of banana on the nose as well. Also, because of the grapes cooler origins and the production style in some Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic areas, there might even be a twinge of something plasticy on the nose. Don’t be alarmed, though; that’s just part of its local character and adds a certain je nais se quoi to your glass of Vignoles.
• Prime growing spots for the Vignoles grape include the Midwest and Upper Midwest, including states like Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan; and the Mid-Atlantic and New England areas. In fact, you’ll find Vignoles wines everywhere from the southern half of Maine, New Hampshire, and Cape Cod all the way down through upstate New York (the Finger Lakes region is surprisingly robust with its Vignoles plantings), Long Island, parts of central Pennsylvania and down into Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. Anything lower than that, though, and it tends to get too humid in the spring and summer for the grape to thrive.
• We mentioned above that the Vignoles grape was originally created by a professional grape hybrizier named J.F. Ravat. And sadly, while we couldn’t find much on Ravat himself (sorry, we really tried; believe us), we did want to tell you more about the man who created one of the grapes that Ravat used to cross-breed Vignoles, and that man is Albert Seibel. Within the wine breeding community, Seibel has a singular reputation. Born in France in 1844, Seibel lived to be 92 years old and he dedicated his life to cross-breeding French vitis vinifera grapes with native American grapes that seemed resistant to the phylloxera virus. His goal was to create strains of grapes that would remain resistant to phylloxera and other potentially catastrophic grape diseases while still producing highly drinkable wines. Over the course of his life, he and his company successfully hybridized over 16,000 new grapes, about 500 of which were actually grown commercially. While most of his grapes were of lesser quality, those that were planted and produced were used either as blending grapes or to produce cheaper table or jug wines. While very few Seibel grapes are still planted today (you can find them in parts of France and Brazil, and Canada is a big supporter of Seibel grapes, as his hybrids tend to remain robust and hearty in even the harshest of conditions), you can still find some of his successes grown in different parts of the U.S.: Aurore (Seibel 5279), Chelois (Seibel 10878), De Chaunac (Seibel 9549) and probably most notably Chancellor (Seibel 7053) and Vidal Blanc (Vidal 256), which you can find at a lot of the same wineries that produce Vignoles.
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Fun Facts to Impress/Bore People At Parties
From Brein’s Brain to Your Plate
“Damn it, Kern. What’s up with you and these grapes I’ve never heard of. Is this some sort of challenge to me? Are you trying to pull me out of California to experience some new and different things? Well, either way, my thinking with the sweeter Vignoles wines – the demi-secs, secs, and late harvest dessert wines – is that they’d pair up really nicely with that all-American dessert apple pie ala mode. The ripe red apple flavors will mesh nicely with the soft sweetness of the pie and the mellowness of the vanilla ice cream, but the wines have enough of a tartness and bite to them to give the whole thing some piquancy. Here’s the kicker, though: the pie’s got to have lots of cinnamon on it, I mean loaded with cinnamon. There’s a spice component to the wines, and having both the acid and the cinnamon in the pie is really going to bring that out in the wine nicely.”
“As for the dry Vignoles, I’m thinking a fish, simply prepared. Maybe a Mahi-Mahi o another Pacific whitefish. Super easy, either grilled or sauteed with some lemon and butter. Just nice and simple. The green apple and grapefruit flavors aill really bring out all the flavors in the fish. You could probably even pair a dry Vignoles with like a Shrimp scampi, too, as long as you used some lemon and a really dry white wine to cook the shrimp. In fact, if you used the vignoles to saute the shrimp, that would totally work.”
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Chef Brein Clements is the chef/owner of Restaurant Omakase in Riverside, CA, which
is quickly becoming SoCal’s answer to El Bulli. Minus the molecular gastronomy. He
began his cooking career at Domaine Chandon in the Napa Valley and moved on to become
Chef de Cuisine at the famed Balboa Bay Club before opening his own restaurant. Plus
he’s only 28. My man knows his wine and he knows his food. Each week he’ll provide
ingredient and dish recommendations that match up well with the week’s forgotten
grape. You should heed what he says. No, seriously, heed it.
NV Clover Hill Lehigh Valley (PA) Vignoles
We decided to branch out when searching for our Vignoles for this week’s Tasting
Squadron tasting and found our first candidate in the unlikely winemaking region
of northeast Pennsylvania’s Lehigh valley. The Clover Hill was a sweeter example
of a Vignoles, though it didn’t specifically say it was a late-harvest or dessert
wine. But it had some big oak on the nose along with a lot of sweetness and stone
fruits. You could tell it as going to be a sweet wine right from the first sniff,
even though it’s pale straw color didn’t belie that. There may have even been some
banana and toasted marshmallow scents on the nose from additional malolactic fermentation.
Flavorwise, though, there were tons of red apples to this wine, and while it had
a touch of honey, it wasn’t overly sweet. A nice acidic crispness kept it balanced
all the way through its long, long finish. We actually found this wine delightful
and very, very easy to drink. We got ours straight from the Clover Hill winery (they
deliver just about everywhere) and we suggest you do the same. A really strong representative
of a classic sec Vignoles.
2008 Truro American Demi-Sec Vignoles
Up the Atlantic seaboard to our next winery, and who knew they made wine in Massachusetts,
let alone Cape Cod? But those strong sea breezes are doing something right, as this
Truro Vignoles was the revelation of our tasting (closely beating out the Clover
Hill). It may say demi-sec, but this is anything but sweet. Strong green apple scents
on the nose with just a hint of wet stone and some sweet pineapple syrup, but not
enough to make you think the wine was sweet. The palate continues with the green
apple motif, keeping things bright, crisp, and tart and working in just a touch of
apricot to keep it interesting. It started out very much like a green apple Jolly
rancher candy, but by the time the attack finished, it was all grapefruit, delicious
and tart with lots of minerality to it. Suffice to say, we loved this wine and finished
the bottle dead away. We highly recommend picking some up directly through the Truro
winery. We’d definitely call this one of the few good things to come out of the greater
Boston/Cape Cod area in a while.
Our Friend of the Forgotten Grapes Tasting Squadron tastes all of the wines you see
here ahead of time to ensure that you aren’t getting anything rotten or clunky. We
also try to ensure that most of the wines highlighted here are affordably priced
($20 or less) so you can try them out for yourself without having to take out a second
mortgage or sacrificing your kid (or future kid’s) college fund to do so. Lastly,
the Friends of the Forgotten Grapes has relationships with all the fine wine purveyors
we link to in this section. We know them, we trust them. You can order these wines
from them online right now and be trying them out in the next couple of days. Do
yourself a favor and order from them by using the links below. It’s totally worth
it. And tell them that ForgottenGrapes.com sent you, too.
Colder climate wine grapes, particularly white grapes, typically have paler colors than their warmer-weathered brethren, and Vignoles is no different. While it doesn’t have the greenish tinging that some of the German and Austrian grapes we’ve covered on this website have, Vignoles definitely has a pale straw to nearly clear color to it. Late harvest and Botrytisized Vignoles wines, though, will have a darker, more lustrous golden color to them, as is the case with most dessert wines, and the extra time spent converting acid into sugar gives the juice a deeper, richer color.
NV Adam Puchta Missouri Vignoles
We actually were planning to only review two wines for this week’s entry, as a lot
of the upstate New York Vignoles we were looking at either could not ship a bottle
out to California or else the cost was prohibitive enough to do so. But at the last
minute, we found the Adam Puchta Vignoles and decided to put it up to the challenge.
We’re glad we did, as it provided a unique contrast to the others and gave us a representative
from the Midwest to throw into the competition (not that this is a competition).
So Adam Puchta winery, though being in Iowa, outsources their Vignoles grapes from
Missouri for this wine, and it was by far the palest of the three we tasted, nearly
clear in its presentation. The nose definitely had the same stone fruits we expected
from a Vignoles with a LOT of sweetness on it, and that sweetness carried over as
expected when we took our first sip. Super, super sweet wine without the strong acidity
we were expecting and got from the others. This had the flavor of overripe strawberries
and peaches and ended up being pretty sugary, a bit too much for our taste. But if
you like sweet wines, this is one for you. Adam Puchta has this available straight
from the source, so give it a whirl if you’re looking for something sweet and different.
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Go On. Try It. You’ll Like It. 
We’ve spent quite a bit of time this year traveling around that great expanse across the middle of our country known as the Midwest, and if there’s one thing I’m happy to report (outside of the quality of the Cracker Barrel chicken-fried steak platter, the fact that it’s nearly impossible to find a Starbucks off of any interstate, and that yes, Walmart is slowly eroding our national infrastructure from the inside-out) it’s that nearly every small, locally-grown and locally-owned winery we stopped at throughout the Midwest (and yes, we stopped at many; it’s our job after all) featured some variation of a wine utilizing the Vignoles (VIN-yoles) grape.
Now stop for a second. I suspect you people living on the coasts (not you, upstate New York: technically you’re not near a coast; we’ll get to you in a minute) and those of you only familiar with wines from California, Oregon, Washington, or other foreign destinations probably have never heard the word “Vignoles” before. But the folks in the Midwest and in the upstate Finger Lakes region of New York (see, I told you), they’ve grown up with Vignoles as a way of life and are so familiar with it, it’s like a first cousin to them. It’s like blondes in Minnesota, suicides in Ithaca, Maid-Rites in Iowa...Vignoles is simply ubiquitous to each of these regions.
So what is this mythical Vignoles grape, and what’s it all about? Well, I’m glad you asked. Vignoles is a white wine hybrid grape originally produced via the cross-pollination of a
