On The Table For A Thousand Years:
SAVAGNIN BLANC
The French have a wine and they call it 'vin jaune', which we can translate into English as 'yellow wine'. The production method of this wine, which is unique to the region called Jura in the east of France, is also interesting. This wine takes at least six years to mature, spending this time in a barrel whose surface is covered with yeast. When its ripening is complete, it comes into our glass as a golden yellow wine with an intense almond flavor. It also makes a perfect pair with 'comté', one of the famous French cheeses of the same region. It also has another important feature: A 248-year-old 'vin jaune' was sold for 103,700 Euros at an auction in 2018.
Various comments may come to your mind: "May God give wisdom to the man who gave this money" or "May he enjoy drinking it" or "Wow!" Probably, these comments may be the first ones that come to mind. But our article is about the date line revealed in laboratory analyzes of the Savagnin Blanc grape.
Grape seeds obtained during archaeological excavations in France are of great importance in understanding the wines on the menus of our wine-loving ancestors. Excavations in these regions are of special importance as it is known that wine was made with grapes grown in vineyards under the control of monasteries in the past. The nuclei obtained during the excavation are quickly frozen to try to preserve the DNA structure.
From a scientific article written as the final report of research on this subject, we learn the interesting results of DNA tests performed on 28 types of grape seeds. One of these is the Savagnin Blanc grape, which is the subject of this article. As a result of the analysis of a seed found in the waste pit of a monastery in the Orléans region of France, it turned out to be 100 percent identical to today's Savagnin Blanc grape. Considering that the seed found dates back to between 1050 and 1200, it is already very exciting that the grapes grown a thousand years ago have survived to their descendants of today without any changes.
During the research, it was revealed that another grape seed, which was found to date back to 1800 years ago, showed a change limited to only one generation compared to today's Mondeuse Blanche grape. When scientists make DNA comparisons, they can determine how many generations of difference the changes that occur in the organism over time cause.
Mondeuse Blanch is a white grape that is still produced in the Savoy region today. It is surprising that in 1,800 years there is only a one-generation difference.The concrete results revealed by genetic research make some of the urban legends in the wine world no longer legendary. For example, the studies revealed that the Zinfandel grape, one of the favorite wines of the Americans, and the Primitivo grape of the Italians are the same grape.
Since we only focus on Turkish wines in the WAYANA Wine Menu, it is not possible to present you the examples of this article for now. Rest assured that we will do our best to ensure that you are the first to taste the results of similar studies in our country.
Despite everything, we will probably never understand exactly what old wines taste like. The change in the regions where the vineyards are grown, the effect of the sometimes bold methods applied by the modern world to increase grape productivity, and the additives added to the wine for preservation or flavor purposes do not allow our desire to discover this past wine. But there is no end to accessing new information. So we’ll keep searching.
