After realizing that the vine is a valuable agricultural and cultural product, we see that our ancestors established a special relationship with it. Much like the relationships they established with wheat, barley, and other edible plants, human communities that transitioned to settled life succeeded in transforming the wild vine into a cultivated vine under their control.

Asmanın değerli bir tarımsal ve kültürel ürün olduğunun fark edilmesinden sonra atalarımızın asmayla özel bir ilişki kurduğunu görüyoruz. Tıpkı, buğdayla, arpayla ve diğer besin olarak tüketebildikleri bitkilerle kurduklarına benzer bir ilişkiyi asma için de hayata geçirmişler ve yerleşik yaşama geçen insan toplulukları yabani asmayı kendilerinin kontrolunda büyüyen kültür asması haline çevirmeyi başarmışlar.

This relationship, ongoing for the last ten thousand years, is, in fact, in a constant state of evolution. Winegrowers in different regions, through their experiences, have always sought to refine the vine and its fruit, the grape, and this quest continues without change. Over the past two hundred years, scientists focused on uncovering nature's secrets have succeeded in explaining almost every process previously explained by mystery with scientific methods. Thanks to this, our ancestors, who produced wine for thousands of years without knowing the underlying process, finally learned that it happened thanks to an organic living being we call yeast. After this knowledge, as in every similar field, wine production also gained an identity that could continue following rules.

But before all this happened, even if they didn't fully understand how it worked, winegrowers had the opportunity to observe many changes related to the vine firsthand. One of these observations will be used to exemplify today's topic. After gaining proficiency in DNA analysis, scientists had the chance to uncover many unknowns about vines. These studies showed that Cabernet Sauvignon is a natural hybrid offspring resulting from cross-breeding between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. Probably, the first winegrowers who noticed this grape realized its value and made great efforts to propagate it. Thanks to that effort, Cabernet Sauvignon is known, grown, processed, and consumed worldwide today.

But if the winegrowers of that time had seen this hybrid vine as a defective mutation and left it alone, Cabernet Sauvignon would not exist in our lives. Thanks to ancient teachings, winegrowers select competent examples from the vines they cultivate and set them aside to develop in special parts of their vineyards. This practice is of great importance for the preservation of unique examples through traditional methods and for ensuring the continuation of the natural identity of the species with good examples. This traditional practice is called 'massal selection.' As you might guess, the term comes from French, which we associate with the central identity of wine. But like in our language, the word originally has come to French from Arabic. The word ‘masal’, explained in the Nişanyan dictionary as 'didactic story,' is believed to have passed from Aramaic and Syriac into Arabic.

'Massal Selection' is still preferred by some winegrowers today. The most valuable aspect of this practice is that it serves as an alternative to standardization in products. In scientific viticulture, clone selection allows the best-performing vines to be selected based on criteria such as yield, resistance, and product quality, considering today's needs. But every good practice also has a weakness. For example, almost all Cabernet Sauvignon grown in America comes from a specimen called Cabernet Sauvignon Clone 6. Of course, wines with different characteristics emerge due to the differences created by terroirs in the product, but ultimately there is the absolute dominance of a single main type.

While the use of selected clones in vineyards results in a sudden and sharp change, the change occurs gradually and over a wide time span in vineyards where the massal selection method is adopted. Thanks to this slow change, the ‘uniformity’ dominance of clone selection is replaced by the ‘diversified’ approach of massal selection. In our country, the number of grape varieties with clone selection is still minimal, and this process is progressing slowly. However, the situation is different in other wine-producing countries. Let’s see if examples that emerge from these different methods will have a chance to survive in the coming period.