Muscat Ottonel

Identity

Muscat Ottonel is one of the very few grapes in this corpus whose exact date and creators are known.

It was made in 1839 by the nurserymen Moreau-Robert and A. Ottonel, by a deliberate crossing of Muscat d'Eisenstadt with Chasselas. The pedigree is confirmed by markers.

Almost every other grape in this encyclopedia is an accident: a chance seedling whose parentage is reconstructed two centuries later, when it can be reconstructed at all. This one was intended, and its genetic brief was written before it existed.

A grape designed for a problem

The problem was geographical. Muscat à Petits Grains gives the clearest muscat character, but it ripens late and fears the cold: beyond a certain latitude it does not finish.

The crossing therefore aimed at earliness and cold resistance, to carry muscat further north. Chasselas, which is French ampelography's benchmark for earliness, supplied exactly that.

And it works: it ripens early, in the first period, where Muscat à Petits Grains is still waiting. That is the reason for its presence in Alsace.

In the vineyard

Bud burst mid-season, early ripeness, and low vigour — which is unusual, and worth noting. A weakly vigorous variety needs soils that support it rather than soils that restrain it: Pl@ntGrape places it on the marl and clay-limestone soils of Alsace.

In the glass

Dry whites "lighter and more delicate than those of Muscat à Petits Grains". That is the source's phrase, and it states both the gain and its price: latitude won, intensity lost.

The two descriptors on this entry — orange blossom and lemon — are readings of that softened muscat register, not quotations.

Its sugar potential, by contrast, is high, which explains its admission to Alsace's over-ripeness mentions.

Where it is named

In Alsace, a principal variety, made under the "Muscat" usage designation — which it shares with Muscat à Petits Grains, white and pink — or under its own name, "Muscat Ottonel".

In Alsace Grand Cru, where it is among the varieties admitted under the "Muscat" designation, and among those the "vendanges tardives" and "sélection de grains nobles" mentions may complete.

That is a singular position: an 1839 crossing admitted at the highest level of an appellation that recognises only a handful of varieties. Few modern crossings get there.

What it gets confused with

Muscat à Petits Grains, and the confusion is organised by the text itself, since both are sold under the "Muscat" designation. A Muscat d'Alsace may be one, the other, or both blended. Petits Grains is more intense and more spiced; Ottonel is lighter, more floral, earlier to ripen.

Chasselas, its parent, shares its earliness but none of its aromas — the muscat character comes entirely from the other side of the pedigree.