The fact that the history of wine is littered with major instances in which one grape variety has been mistakenly identified as another will be of little comfort to the fifty-plus Australian growers and makers of what they collectively thought was albariÌÕo but which in most if not all cases, we believe, is actually another grape entirely, called savagnin. It happened in the 1980s when Australian viticulturists were attempting to increase our plantings of merlot. Most of the time, we got cabernet franc instead. Chileans faced much the same problem when their newly-planted ‘merlot’ turned out to be the near-extinct carmen’re, something they have since turned around as a point of difference and marketing strength. Similarly, much Chilean sauvignon blanc is actually a lesser variety called sauvignonasse, which could even be the same grape as Tocai from North East Italy, Argentina’s pinot blanc turned out to be the lesser chenin blanc and much South African and even Australian riesling has been correctly identified as crouchen. So our albariÌÕo growers in Australia should not feel too discriminated against. There are more than 5,000 different wine grape varieties and many clones of some, so it’s a certainty that the same thing will happen again!Originating in the Rias Baixas of Spain and the Galician region in Portugual (where it is called alvarinho), albariÌÕo is a late-ripening grape able to make luscious, juicy and deeply flavoured savoury white wine with a pleasingly fluffy texture. Over the last few years we have seen an increasing number of new Australian wines from a number of regions sold as Albarino, and frankly, some have been pretty good Ð certainly good enough for many (myself included) to predict a bright and happy future for albariÌÕo downunder.Growers buy vine cuttings from nurseries, and Australia’s nurseries obtained their stocks from the CSIRO, the government research body, whose stocks were imported in 1989 from the National Germplasm Collection in Spain. In 2008 the French ampelographer Jean-Michel Boursiquot asserted that Australia’s albariÌÕo was in fact savagnin, whose principal home is the Jura region of France where it makes the distinctive Vin Jaune. This has since been confirmed by DNA testing. Furthermore, savagnin is identical to traminer, the pale skinned, non-aromatic version of gewåürztraminer and is also known around Europe as gringet, paÌÓen and heida. Given that there have been rumblings about the identity of Australian albariÌÕo for nigh on two decades, questions still need to be answered about why the issue took so long to resolve.Meantime, where do Australian growers of savagnin go from here? An understandable concern is that if they label their wine as such it would be confused with sauvignon blanc, with which it has little in common. Call it traminer? A dead duck, especially with plenty of (non-selling) quality gewåürztraminer on the market. Stay calling it albariÌÕo when we all know it isn’t? Asking for trouble. Top-graft genuine albariÌÕo onto the vines in question? As soon as they can.
