快猫短视频

GENE detectives say that the grape that produces the Californian red wine
Zinfandel does not originate from southern Italy as most people believe. It is
probably the offspring of an unidentified Croatian grape.

Grape varieties are developed by hybridising different 鈥減arent鈥� vines. These
are then propagated through cuttings, so a Chardonnay growing in California
should be genetically identical to the vine in France from which it was
originally taken. Yet the origins of most grape varieties remain a mystery.

Using DNA fingerprinting, wine geneticist Carole Meredith of the University
of California at Davis has traced the parentage of a number of important grapes.
In 1999, wine growers were shocked when she showed that Chardonnay comes from
Gouais blanc, a lowly grape that makes uninteresting wine
(快猫短视频, 11 September 1999, p 16).

Now Meredith is tracking the origin of Zinfandel. First she confirmed that it
is the same as Primitivo, a grape from southern Italy. But Primitivo itself has
only been grown since the 1700s and its origin is also unknown.

Croatian wine makers have claimed that Zinfandel is the same as the Croatian
grape Plavac Mali. But when Meredith and her colleagues compared the lengths of
DNA fragments from Zinfandel with those from a number of Croatian grapes, they
found no exact match. This means that Plavac Mali and Zinfandel are not the same
grape. But the similarities are sufficient to say Plavac Mali is probably
closely related to Zinfandel. 鈥淲e haven鈥檛 found Zinfandel, but we have found all
of its cousins,鈥� she says.