Mondeuse Blanche

Identity

Mondeuse Blanche is down to a few hectares in Savoie, and it is one of Syrah's two parents.

With Dureza, an Ardèche variety also all but gone, it produced the grape that makes Côte-Rôtie, Hermitage and Cornas, and that has since spread across every continent.

Two Alpine relics behind a global variety. It is one of the most striking results genetic marking has produced, and it fits in a sentence: Syrah's parents are two grapes nobody would plant today.

What that says about parentage

This corpus has met the same lesson several times, and it repeats here in its sharpest form.

Gouais Blanc, despised and pulled up, is the parent of Chardonnay, Gamay, Melon de Bourgogne, Auxerrois and Furmint. Savagnin stands behind Chenin, Riesling, Petit Manseng and Duras. And Mondeuse Blanche, down to nothing, stands behind Syrah.

A grape's worth is not inherited. A crossing does not average its parents: it draws from a pool, and the result can land far above — or far below — both.

In the vineyard

Bud burst mid-season, ripeness late. Pl@ntGrape places it on the Savoyard slopes, limestone scree and molasse, and the source record says so frankly: modern data are scarce.

That is what one expects of a variety down to a few hectares. You do not measure what you no longer grow.

Its vigour is not filled in. Empty field, "not established".

In the glass

Medium acidity, medium to high alcohol. This entry's single descriptor, green apple, is given in the original stub as "consistent with the variety's high acidity" — a reading, then, and not a quotation.

What cannot be said: what a Mondeuse Blanche wine tastes like today. Too little is made for a description to mean anything, and no source opened here offers one.

Where it is named

In Savoie, a principal variety of Vin de Savoie — a rank the appellation keeps for it though only a few hectares remain.

It is the same gesture as Jurançon's with Camaralet and Lauzet: a regulatory text keeping alive what economics let go.

Mother of two varieties, and the kinship that follows

Mondeuse Noire is not its coloured version: it is its daughter. The VIVC confirms a complete pedigree by markers — Mondeuse Blanche × Tressot.

Which produces a relationship genetic marking can state precisely and no field observation would ever have found: Mondeuse Noire and Syrah are half-sisters. They share one parent, Mondeuse Blanche, and differ in the other — Tressot for one, Dureza for the other.

A grape reduced to a few hectares that is the link between Savoie's emblematic red and the northern Rhône's. It is, in this corpus, the finest example of what genetics added to ampelography: a real kinship, invisible to the eye, between two wines nobody would think to compare.