Brun Fourca

Identity

Brun-Fourca is a Provençal black with a known parentage, which is rare enough among obscure varieties to be worth noting.

According to genetic analysis it comes from a crossing of Pougayen with Best's R2 V73. Neither parent has an entry in this corpus — the first because no published appellation names it, the second because its very name marks a collection accession rather than a cultivated variety.

It is a parentage that leads nowhere, and it says plainly what this grape is: an object of ampelography more than an object of the cellar.

A visible fault

Pl@ntGrape notes a morphological peculiarity with a direct consequence: small bunches with very large berries, "prone to dropping".

Large berries on small bunches make an unfavourable skin-to-juice ratio — less colour and tannin, more dilution. And berries that fall are berries lost before harvest.

For a black variety that is a hard combination to defend. Its structure bears it out: medium acidity, light to medium tannin. Nothing to compensate.

In the vineyard

Late bud burst, mid-season ripeness, medium vigour, semi-upright habit.

Late budding is the record's one clear advantage: it puts the variety beyond the reach of spring frost.

In the glass

This entry's single descriptor is a reading of its light-red register, not a quotation — Pl@ntGrape names none.

And as with most of the Palette varieties published here, no single-variety bottling is documented. What is known of it comes from the plant.

Where it is named

At Palette only, an accessory variety.

It is one of the twenty-four that appellation keeps — a list that holds, among others, a grape from Tokaj, an English table grape and a Californian star under another name.