World Class Grapes for Gold Medal Wines
The fact that you are reading this text means that you are, or are about to become, a serious grower of vines from a unique family of grapes. There is nothing else like them.
They represent the culmination of a centuries-long search for the viticultural Holy Grail, vines that would have the disease resistance and winter hardiness of the best American vine, Norton combined with the superior wine quality of the European Cabernet Sauvignon. Over the last 150 years, various growers, and institutions have tried to breed Norton with other grapes to come up with better varieties. No one succeeded. There was not (until now) a single commercial Norton hybrid. The same was true for Cabernet Sauvignon. No one (until now) had success in making any commercially viable interspecific crosses with Cabernet.
Norton and Cabernet were two grapes that proved to be almost impossible to successfully breed with other vines, and the task of trying to breed these two unwilling parents together seemed likely to be quixotic, or herculean at best. One Midwestern state has sadly devoted 19 years and over five million dollars ($5,000,000) trying to cross Norton with Cabernet, with no releases yet in sight.
But we did it. Back in 2001 we got these two confirmed bachelor(ette)s to fall for one another, and they became the proud parents of Crimson Cabernet and Cabernet Doré, and we now have hundreds of acres, and growers, in 32 states.
CRIMSON CABERNET - 2016 - Oliver Winery
BEST OF CLASS - DOUBLE GOLD
Indy International Wine Competition - 2018
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GOLD MEDAL - 95 points- New World International
Blumenhoff Winery - Dutzow, Missouri
The 400 Year Search in the the Eastern United States for a Grape to Make Dry Wine
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VITIS VINIFERA - The European GrapeCalifornia has a climate with very mild winters, so they are able to grow the European wine grapes like Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon.
As you go east and pass over the Rockies into the American Midwest and East, the situation changes in one very dramatic way. The winters become considerably colder with subzero temperatures common.
As you go east and pass over the Rockies into the American Midwest and East, the situation changes in one very dramatic way. The winters become considerably colder with subzero temperatures common.
The European grapes, the Vitis vinifera, cannot long withstand these arctic winters, and unless they are planted near a very large body of water, (Atlantic Ocean, the Great Lakes), they will inevitably die.
Every eastern grower eventually gets bitten by the “vinifera bug”. The symptoms include the delusion that he or she can succeed where no one has before, and that Mother Nature will not have the last word.
Treatment can be quite expensive. There is no vaccine, so every grower will eventually get some form of this disorder. The tragedy here, as thousands of eastern growers over hundreds of years have learned, is that vinifera vines can do perfectly well for 364 days out of year, but it only takes a few hours of one night, on one day, for the temperature to drop to minus 10 and begin to put the vinifera vines out of their misery.
VITIS LABRUSCA - Concord, etc.
Eastern North America is home to dozens of families of wild grape vines. Unfortunately none of them are suitable for making wine either because of un-wine-like wild flavors or very small berries.
For hundreds of years growers and authorities have noted that if wine grape were ever able to succeed in the East they would have to be part American grape and part European, in other words a cross between the two, an interspecific hybrid.
Fortunately, Mother Nature came to the rescue and crossed a wild Labrusca vine with the European grape Semillion, creating the Catawba grape. Later, again by an accident of nature, the Concord grape was created by Catawba getting itself crossed with another wild Labrusca vine. Concord later gave birth to Niagara completing the “Big Three” of eastern viticulture.
Until the early 1960s the Labrusca grapes were all that was available for eastern wine growers.
None of the Labruscas produced acceptable dry wine. This is often blamed on methyl anthranilate which is a major component of the aroma of the Labrusca grapes (think Welch’s grape juice).
However, the real culprit is not the smell; it is the very astringent flavor of the grapes, a very pucker taste, much like that of over-steeped tea. This can be overcome by adding lots of sugar to Labrusca wines making them by far the most popular sweet wines in America.
So if you are looking to make sweet wine you cannot do better than the Labruscas, but they are totally unacceptable for making dry wine.
Catawba
Parent of Concord
FRENCH-AMERICAN HYBRIDS When the phylloxera epidemic hit Europe, growers finally came up with a cure by grafting the European vines onto resistant American rootstocks. Albert Seibel from the south of France came up with another approach which was to crossbreed the then ubiquitous Aramon and Alicante Bouchet (lesser quality mass production grapes) with an American rootstock, AxR1, and a wild vine from the woods of Missouri, Jaeger 70.
From this very limited gene pool, (more of a puddle), the rather non-discriminating Seibel created 50,000 new grape vines. Almost all other grape breeders, who came along later, like Seyve and Villlard, simply bred Seibel’s grapes together (again) and stuck their own names on them, which is why almost all French-American "hybrid" grapes, regardless of name, have very similar wild flavors and smells.
When these vines began to become popular in the U.S. in the late 1960s, they were known by the breeder’s name and a number, e.g. Seibel 7053 or Seyve-Villard 5276. Growers in New York dressed them up and gave them new Francophonic names: Chancellor, Seyval Blanc, Chambourcin, Vignoles, etc.
These “Hybrid” vines (the name now almost exclusively referred to the French-American hybrids) could be used to make dry wines, so they were a blessing in that regard. It was quickly learned however that their wines did not age well and developed odd flavors and smells.
Their main characteristic was that when the wines were very young they very much resembled their European parents, but as the wine aged they began to more and more resemble their wild American parent.
They began to exhibit what the French called the gout américain or the "American stink", a difficult to describe odd, non-wine, stale, cloying, burnt smell and taste which is disagreeable. (The French-American hybrid grapes have been prohibited in France and the European Union for the production of commercial wine.)
So, the Hybrids are passable if one can make and sell the wine quickly. We would always try to have the majority of the wine sold before it was 9 months old. If you get stuck with older inventories, then you have problems.
So, the Hybrids are passable if one can make and sell the wine quickly. We would always try to have the majority of the wine sold before it was 9 months old. If you get stuck with older inventories, then you have problems.
Albert Seibel
Parent of the "Hybrid" grapes
NORTON - aka Cynthiana,
aka Virginia Seedling
Norton is a vine all by itself. No other vine looks like Norton and none other grows like Norton. It has four outstanding characteristics.
1. It is very disease resistant2. It is very winter hardy 3. It American parentage is unique, totally unlike any other vine ...thus ....3. It is the only “native” American vine that makes a dry European style wine. For us this made Norton the obvious choice (really the only choice), as the grape to use to breed with Cabernet and Zinfandel.
1. It is very disease resistant2. It is very winter hardy 3. It American parentage is unique, totally unlike any other vine ...thus ....3. It is the only “native” American vine that makes a dry European style wine. For us this made Norton the obvious choice (really the only choice), as the grape to use to breed with Cabernet and Zinfandel.
On the minus side, Norton is a super-vigorous grower and is difficult to manage in the vineyard. In the winery it is a nightmare.
The berries are very small, not juicy, and the seeds take up about one-third of the crush. It is the most difficult wine to make.
Unfortunately a plethora of wineries make it, and only a hand full do it well, so the amount of bad Norton that is out there far outnumbers the good.
Everyone who has every grown Norton has planted some seeds hoping to get a better vine. No one has every succeeded … up until now.
Everyone who has every grown Norton has planted some seeds hoping to get a better vine. No one has every succeeded … up until now.
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Winter hardy, disease resistant, cute
Parent for DVR vines
The DVR Vines -
Crimson Cabernet and Cabernet Doré were both created in Davis, California in 2001, by crossing Cabernet Sauvignon with Norton. Crimson Cabernet is now grown in 32 states from Michigan to Texas and from Massachusetts to California. It was developed to combine Norton's outstanding disease resistance and winter hardiness with the superior wine quality of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Like its parent, Cabernet Sauvignon, the wine of Crimson Cabernet tends to be highly reflective of the individual terroirs and vintage years in which the vines are grown. Its rich crimson colored wine has big fruity flavors when young, but unlike Cab it does not require extended aging and can be bottled and enjoyed after only a year or two. Although rich in middle tannins, the wine is remarkable smooth and velvety with a clean pleasant finish.
Crimson Cabernet was developed in Davis, California, by Lucian Dressel with the advice and guidance of Dr. Harold Olmo and the staff of the USDA Germ Plasm Repository. The vine is covered by a US Patent owned by Davis Viticultural Research, a private corporation that is not directly affiliated with any educational or governmental institution. The goal in creating Crimson Cabernet was to breed a grape that would make a wine that was totally Vitis vinifera-like in quality, yet was able to withstand the greater disease pressures and harsher weather conditions which in much of the US makes vinifera wine growing extremely difficult, or impossible.
In the vineyard, Crimson Cabernet vines have proven to be very resistant to such foliar diseases as powdery mildew, black rot, and bunch rot, as well as the vine diseases crown gall and Pierce’s Disease. It is also grown on its own roots since they have proven to be resistant to Phylloxera.
Like its parent, Cabernet Sauvignon, the wine of Crimson Cabernet tends to be highly reflective of the individual terroirs and vintage years in which the vines are grown. Its rich crimson colored wine has big fruity flavors when young, but unlike Cab it does not require extended aging and can be bottled and enjoyed after only a year or two. Although rich in middle tannins, the wine is remarkable smooth and velvety with a clean pleasant finish.
Crimson Cabernet was developed in Davis, California, by Lucian Dressel with the advice and guidance of Dr. Harold Olmo and the staff of the USDA Germ Plasm Repository. The vine is covered by a US Patent owned by Davis Viticultural Research, a private corporation that is not directly affiliated with any educational or governmental institution. The goal in creating Crimson Cabernet was to breed a grape that would make a wine that was totally Vitis vinifera-like in quality, yet was able to withstand the greater disease pressures and harsher weather conditions which in much of the US makes vinifera wine growing extremely difficult, or impossible.
In the vineyard, Crimson Cabernet vines have proven to be very resistant to such foliar diseases as powdery mildew, black rot, and bunch rot, as well as the vine diseases crown gall and Pierce’s Disease. It is also grown on its own roots since they have proven to be resistant to Phylloxera.
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Crimson Cabernet - Machine harvested - Augusta, MO - 2018 Cabernet Dore' - Lexington, KY - Prior to verasion 2017