Alicante
Bouschet
No
matter what color their skins, the great
majority of wine grapes have clear juice. Very
few have red colored juice; the French call
these types teinturier, literally
"dyers". One of the most famous and
widely-planted is a wine grape cross,
Alicante Bouschet, created by French father and
son vine breeders.
Until the 1960s, Aramon
was the most widely planted grape in France. Growers like
it for two reasons. Foremost is its high productivity, over
20 tons per acre in fertile soils. Second, it is one of the
few vinifera varieties with natural resistance to powdery
mildew. The wine produced from this grape, however, is
extremely light in color, flavor, and alcohol, and it always
requires blending to boost these factors.
In 1824, Louis
Bouschet crossed Aramon with an ancient
red-juiced vinifera variety, Teinturier du
Cher, naming the result Petit
Bouschet. In 1865, Louis' son Henri
continued his on father's path, crossing
Petit Bouschet with Grenache to
create Alicante Bouschet.
Alicante
Bouschet is a very productive grape that can
bear crops as large as 12 tons per acre and must
be controlled from its tendency to over crop. In
addition to red flesh and juice, it has thick
and tough skins. The grape's acidity can be
problematic, too high in cooler regions, too low
in warmer ones.
These
qualities led to high popularity during
Prohibition, since the fruit shipped well and
Alicante's intense color could stand dilution
and extension with water and sugar to make more
than double the normal wine gallonage per ton of
grapes. Plantings in California reached nearly
30,000 acres by the 1940s, but have since
declined to less than 5,000 acres.
Primarily used
as a blending grape where color and tannin are
needed, only a very few California wineries have
offered Alicante Bouschet as a varietal. On its
own, Alicante Bouschet generally makes wine that
lacks distinction in character and has texture
that is somewhat coarse. Although color is its
main asset, it is also unstable, browning and
precipitating easily.
One winery,
Angelo Papagni, of Madera, had the unique
distinction of successfully producing a string
of award-winning and long-lived varietal wines
from Alicante Bouschet, in the 1970s.
Jim
LaMar
