W&S: Serine

Interesting article in the current issue of Josh's W&S magazine:
W&S:Serine

on the old Serine clone of Syrah in the NRhoneVlly.

Don't know how widespread this clone is in Calif but I believe JohnAlban has some planted.

Tom

[David M. Bueker]

Reiterating a conversation I had with Carole Meredith in January - she found that the DNA of Syrah and Serine were identical. The comments in the article about seeing the true expression of Cote Rotie seem like voodoo - and I am a huge fan of the producers that are prominent in the article. Considering the overall list I cannot help but thinking that it is much more about dedicated growers, working with very controlled yields and treating the wines with minimal oak/other tricks.

Reiterating a conversation I had with Carole Meredith in January - she found that the DNA of Syrah and Serine were identical. The comments in the article about seeing the true expression of Cote Rotie seem like voodoo - and I am a huge fan of the producers that are prominent in the article. Considering the overall list I cannot help but thinking that it is much more about dedicated growers, working with very controlled yields and treating the wines with minimal oak/other tricks.

But what about the ampelographic evidence of smaller berries in the 'serine' clone? I don't think that Eric Texier is given to mystical pronouncements. And keep in mind that DNA profiling is a probabilistic science: no two genomes of anything other than clones are 100% identical. What one looks for are gross differences in DNA sequence, but the threshold for difference is something that has to be decided upon. None of this is to dispute Dr. Meredith's science, but it's important to understand the nuances. Keep in mind that Primitivo and Zinfandel are genetically identical, too, but are different in the field, even on Mt. Veeder.

Mark Lipton

[David M. Bueker]

Mystical pronouncements? In wine they are like salt. No dish is complete without them.

I have to admit that we did not get into the details of the DNA analysis. I am a Physicist, not a Biologist.

The thing about dedicated growers still seems paramount to me.

Reiterating a conversation I had with Carole Meredith in January - she found that the DNA of Syrah and Serine were identical. The comments in the article about seeing the true expression of Cote Rotie seem like voodoo - and I am a huge fan of the producers that are prominent in the article. Considering the overall list I cannot help but thinking that it is much more about dedicated growers, working with very controlled yields and treating the wines with minimal oak/other tricks.

I've not heard in Calif any discussions about the Serine clone (which they don't label it as such in the article) of Syrah as being anything
magical or the next big thing. I thought, from the article, that those growers (and they are, by&large, very good growers) who embrace Serine
may be overstating their case, waxing overly-enthusiastic. Just like some folks in Calif wax enthusiastic about the old Martini or MtEden
clones of PinotNoir, all allegedly coming from Romanee-Conti, as being far superior to the new Dijon clones.
At one time, it was thought that Syrah, which was a natural cross to come out of the Savoie, was not even VitusVinifera, but something
called VitusAlborigica...as KevinHammel once put on his labels followed by "??".
Tom

I think what Carole Meredith was saying is that California Syrah and Northern Rhone Serine are the same grape variety. Not that they were the same clone of that variety. A grape variety may have many different clones. Pinot noir has hundreds of different clones with different growing characteristics and flavor profiles. So does syrah.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

Yes, but then the mumbo jumbo about not gettign terroir with a clone is exactly that - mumbo jumbo.

I think this only shows that the most desirable, interesting, complex wines (even though they might be thought of as a “single” varietal wine) can possible be a “blend”. I would like to know what “pre- clone planting” means? Shortly after using “monoculture” I would think man would have observed “clones” or “mutations”. (All right, maybe they thought some of them were just “freaks of nature”. But if the “mutation” was “desirable” I’m sure they would of tried to duplicate it.

Salute

at Hospice du Rhone back in the early '00s, Luis Barruol from Chateau St. Cosme in Gigondas told me he'd had my '93 Syrah from Durell Vineyard at a restaurant on the East Coast, before he'd gotten out to Paso that year, and was terribly excited to find in it the taste of the "true Sérine," never having found that outside the Northern Rhone. The '93 Durell was from the "Durell" clone, which is Shiraz #1. I can't imagine that part of the "taste of the "true Sérine" doesn't involve, among other things, where the grapes are planted, how they're farmed, when they're picked, and how they're handled in the winery. Interestingly, also, I believe the choice of rootstock probably plays a role of some significance. (The best of the Durell Syrahs from ESJ were all made predominantly from grapes from the original block there, which was on AXR-1, and had an aromatic character like no other Syrah from California that I've ever encountered, even in the fermenter, before the wine ever encountered a barrel. Even before fermentation, when we were de-stemming, the winery would fill up with the smell of ham, really good ham.)

[David M. Bueker]

So many factors go into great wine!

“Durell” clone is Shiraz #1? If today I order the “Durell” clone I would hope it was sourced from the FPS California Durell Syrah 08 and not Shiraz 01.

The originally source of the (originally) Durell Syrah vineyard in the late 1970’s early 1980’s could of been Shiraz #1 (sourced from an old vine grown in Victoria, Australia). Take cuttings from a Durell Syrah vine you now have an Australia/California (Durell) clone. (Taking multiply cuttings from a single “Mother vine” will produce plants genetically identical but not necessarily the same exact clone).

Salute

[David M. Bueker]

All of this is just convincing me even more that the line in the article about Serine being the only way to see the terroir of Cote Rotie is pure bunk.

Serine is NOT a clone. Serine is a generic word which designs all the syrah vines originaly from the (large) Côte Rotie area and which are NOT any of the recently selected clones (since the 60s) that where selected mostly for canopy management ease, resistance to wind, often high productivity...
Note that most of the clones available where selected in the southern rhone or in the tarn et garonne, not in the northern rhone. Only the very recently available 1141 and 1188 were selected in Cote Rotie. They could be considered as "serine" selected clones.
For most of the growers that have paid attention to these old vines, serine also means massale certainly not clonal selection.

There are a lot of different main families of serine. Small berries is not always a specificity.

[David M. Bueker]

Thank you Eric.

Thank you Eric.

Good for you, David. By dismissing Serine as pure bunk, you got somebody to comment that actually knows what they're talking about!!

Eric,
Thanks for clarifying things. I've always heard the Calif folks refer to "Serine" as a clone. But, in fact, I gather it is a SelectionneMassal
from old vnyds in NorthernRhone?? So I've not heard of the 1141 and 1188 clones. So I gather those are single clones of Serine??
These are different from the ENTAV clones that were brought to Calif?? Do you know if 1141/1188 have gone to Calif yet??
Tom

[David M. Bueker]

I did not dismiss Serine as bunk. I dismissed the idea that only Serine can show the terroir of Cote Rotie.

Couldn’t massale selection be considered a “localized” clonal selection? Basically for a given site you are taking the most “healthy” and “desirable” vines of the site and using them to replace those that die or perform “poorly” or “undesirable”. After confirming that a “newly established site” is “suitable” for a given variety than you can move on to “massale selection”. Basically this is what was done in establishing the “Durell” clone.

Salute

I did not dismiss Serine as bunk. I dismissed the idea that only Serine can show the terroir of Cote Rotie.

Yup...understand what you said, David. Just simplified (too much) your response.
Tom

The massale selection of serine coming from Clusel Roch is a selection of 1800 vines out of 12000 on their Grand Places VIneyard.
Mine in St Julien en Saint Alban is 1200 vines out of 7600. That's what we call massale.
Feel free to call it clonale. I don't have the feeling it is quite the same than planting a clone or two selected by some else in an other place.

As far as I know from Steve Edmunds himself, Durell clone comes from 1 vine of Australian Shiraz planted in the 70s in the Durell vineyard and known as FPS 01. Not quite the same, I think.

Tom, here is the link to the french clone catalog : http://plantgrape.plantnet-project.org/cepage/Syrah%20N.
It appears that these clones are from IFV not ENTAV.
As you may have noticed, I am not fond of clonal selection and have no idea where they are or were sold!

[David M. Bueker]

Thanks again Eric!

What was planted at Durell, in 1979, was bench-grafted Shiraz #1 from a nursery in St. Helena (grafted on AXR-1). The original planting there was about 6 acres. The #1 refers to the number of days of heat-treatment to eradicate virus. I don't know the history of Shiraz #1, or any of the other clones. Are they all from one, single plant? That sounds like a kind of crazy idea. When I've collected cuttings from a vineyard, it's usually been harvesting appropriately healthy-looking sticks, and sorting through them to choose the best, and propagating from those.

Steve

I noted in 2006 after reading a post on one of the wine-boards (I would have said winetherapy) :
Origine du clone Durell (syrah vinifiée par Steve Edmunds - Edmunds Saint John rencontré en janvier 2004 chez Vintner Select) source FPS Grape Program Newsletter.
Issu d'un seul individu de Shiraz FPS 01 issu d'une importation depuis les vignobles Best à Great Western, Victoria, Australie et multiplié par Linda Vista Nursery à la fin des années 70

I thought that you wrote that post : obviously not!
That's all I have on the subject, and if I can trust myself, the Durell vineyard might have been planted with one single clone coming from one single vine, and hence the so called Durell clone(this I am pretty sure, though I might have misunderstood the post).

FOUND!!! http://fpms.ucdavis.edu/WebSitePDFs/Newsletters&Publications/GrapeNewsletterOct2004.pdf Go to page 10.

The official story of Durell Clone by Rhonda Smith.

[David M. Bueker]

God bless the Internet