Gamay de Chaudenay

Identity

Gamay de Chaudenay is a mutation of a mutation.

Gamay Noir mutated once at Bouze-lès-Beaune, giving Gamay de Bouze, a teinturier with coloured flesh. That one mutated in turn, and the result was observed in 1832 by J.-M. Bidault de Chaudenay, whose name it carries.

Three steps from Gamay, each more deeply coloured than the last. It is the longest chain of mutations this corpus documents.

A date, and what it is worth

1832, and an observer's name. This corpus has only two other varieties dated so precisely: Muscat Ottonel (1839, Moreau-Robert and Ottonel) and Caladoc (1958, Paul Truel).

The difference matters. Muscat Ottonel and Caladoc are intended crossings — two parents chosen and a seed sown. Gamay de Chaudenay is a found mutation: nobody made it, somebody noticed it.

All the ampelographic work of the nineteenth century sits in that distinction: spotting, in a plot, the shoot that is not like the others, and propagating it before it disappears.

In the vineyard

Early bud burst and ripeness, like the whole family. Disease behaviour "identical to that of Gamay Noir": the mutation changed nothing about the plant.

One exception, all the same: its vigour is low, where Gamay Noir is vigorous. It is the only agronomic difference the source retains.

In the glass

More deeply coloured still than Gamay de Bouze, and less fruity again than Gamay Noir.

Each step of the chain trades aroma for colour. At the end you have a grape whose only quality is colouring matter — which is exactly what is asked of a blending teinturier, and nothing more.

This entry's single descriptor, cherry, is a reading of the Gamay register, not a quotation.

Where it is named

In Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages, an accessory variety for reds and rosés — the same two appellations as Gamay de Bouze.

What it gets confused with

Gamay de Bouze, its immediate parent, from which it differs only in depth of colour. And Gamay Fréaux, which the source gives as the most deeply coloured of the three, with no entry here.

Three teinturiers from the one Gamay, ordered by intensity of colour: a family whose arrangement is a scale rather than a tree.