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DNA SLEUTH HUNTS WINE ROOTS IN ANATOLIA
Agence France Presse
November 27, 2012 Tuesday 4:00 AM GMT
There are easier places to make wine than the spectacular, desolate
landscapes of southeast Turkey, but DNA analysis suggests it is here
that Stone Age farmers first domesticated the wine grape.
Today Turkey is home to archaeological sites as well as vineyards of
ancient grape varieties like Bogazkere and Okuzgozu, which drew the
curiosity of the Swiss botanist and grape DNA sleuth Jose Vouillamoz,
for the clues they may offer to the origin of European wine.
Together with the biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern,
Vouillamoz has spent nearly a decade studying the world's cultivated
and wild vines.
"We wanted to collect samples from wild and cultivated grape vines
from the Near East -- that means southeastern Anatolia, Armenia and
Georgia -- to see in which place the wild grape was, genetically
speaking, linked the closest to the cultivated variety."
"It turned out to be southeastern Anatolia," the Asian part of modern
Turkey, said Vouillamoz, speaking at the EWBC wine conference in the
Turkish city of Izmir this month. "We propose the hypothesis that it
is most likely the first place of grape vine domestication."
McGovern's lab at the University of Pennsylvania Museum also provided
archaeological evidence of wine's Anatolian roots after analysing
residues of liquid recovered from vessels thousands of years old.
Author of "Uncorking the Past" and "Ancient Wine", McGovern used
a sensitive chemical technique to look for significant amounts of
tartaric acid -- for which grapes are the only source in the Middle
East.
While Georgia, Armenia and Iran all played a role in ancient
winemaking, preliminary evidence from pottery and even older clay
mineral containers, seems to place the very first domestication of the
wild Eurasian grape Vitis vinifera in southeastern Anatolia sometime
between 5,000 and 8,500 BC, McGovern said.
-- "This heritage is now under threat" --
Southeast Anatolia is part of the Fertile Crescent, the name given
to a vast area stretching through modern-day Iraq and Iran to the
Nile Valley in the south, widely seen as the birthplace of the eight
so-called "founder" crops -- from chickpea to barley -- that are the
world's first known domesticated plants.
Evidence found by the research duo suggests that for wine too,
hundreds of today's grapes find their roots in "founder" varieties
descended from the wild grapes of the region.
Through DNA profiling, Vouillamoz says he has isolated 13 of these
"founder" grapes by tracing the family trees of European fine wine
grapes.
He believes farmers across southeast Anatolia or the Near East started
domesticating the wild Vitis vinifera grape around the same time --
giving rise to the 13 "founders".
This, he says, debunks the long-held notion that most Western European
grapes were introduced independently from the Middle East, Near East
or Egypt, Turkey or Greece, at different times and in different places.
One of the "founders", Gouais Blanc, is a good example.
"He gave birth to at least 80 varieties in western Europe, including
Chardonnay, Gamay, Furmint, and Riesling," said Vouillamoz, who
recently co-authored, "Wine Grapes," a monumental opus on 1,368 vine
varieties. "I call it the Casanova of grapes."
Standing in a gully between Elazig and Diyarbakir, Daniel O'Donnell,
chief winemaker at the Turkish winery Kayra, gestured to the great
expanse of mountains where wild grape vines still grow in gullies
and washes.
"It is a wine-making pilgrimage to come back here and find,
genetically, 8,000, 9,000-year old vines," said O'Donnell, who arrived
here from California in 2006.
"It's mind-blowing to be a Napa guy paying attention to the fine
details, the minutiae of wine making, and come here."
But this heritage is now under threat.
In the Kurdish Diyarbakir region, where women on subsistence farms tend
the vines and goats do the pruning, phylloxera is killing vineyards
that have not been grafted onto disease-resistant rootstock.
"Unfortunately, phylloxera has arrived here. Every year we see the
vines die," said Murat Uner, wine production manager at Kayra.
Phylloxera annihilated vineyards in Europe in the late 19th century.
Wild vines are somewhat protected by their eco-system, but cultivated
vines are extremely vulnerable.
"We explain it to them, but they don't want to listen," says Uner.
The frustration is shared by winemakers who are trying to develop
the Turkish wine industry, and experts who fear the loss of an
irreplaceable genetic diversity within these ancient varieties.
"They are incredibly lucky to have this," said Vouillamoz. "It has
been lost in many places."
Agence France Presse
November 27, 2012 Tuesday 4:00 AM GMT
There are easier places to make wine than the spectacular, desolate
landscapes of southeast Turkey, but DNA analysis suggests it is here
that Stone Age farmers first domesticated the wine grape.
Today Turkey is home to archaeological sites as well as vineyards of
ancient grape varieties like Bogazkere and Okuzgozu, which drew the
curiosity of the Swiss botanist and grape DNA sleuth Jose Vouillamoz,
for the clues they may offer to the origin of European wine.
Together with the biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern,
Vouillamoz has spent nearly a decade studying the world's cultivated
and wild vines.
"We wanted to collect samples from wild and cultivated grape vines
from the Near East -- that means southeastern Anatolia, Armenia and
Georgia -- to see in which place the wild grape was, genetically
speaking, linked the closest to the cultivated variety."
"It turned out to be southeastern Anatolia," the Asian part of modern
Turkey, said Vouillamoz, speaking at the EWBC wine conference in the
Turkish city of Izmir this month. "We propose the hypothesis that it
is most likely the first place of grape vine domestication."
McGovern's lab at the University of Pennsylvania Museum also provided
archaeological evidence of wine's Anatolian roots after analysing
residues of liquid recovered from vessels thousands of years old.
Author of "Uncorking the Past" and "Ancient Wine", McGovern used
a sensitive chemical technique to look for significant amounts of
tartaric acid -- for which grapes are the only source in the Middle
East.
While Georgia, Armenia and Iran all played a role in ancient
winemaking, preliminary evidence from pottery and even older clay
mineral containers, seems to place the very first domestication of the
wild Eurasian grape Vitis vinifera in southeastern Anatolia sometime
between 5,000 and 8,500 BC, McGovern said.
-- "This heritage is now under threat" --
Southeast Anatolia is part of the Fertile Crescent, the name given
to a vast area stretching through modern-day Iraq and Iran to the
Nile Valley in the south, widely seen as the birthplace of the eight
so-called "founder" crops -- from chickpea to barley -- that are the
world's first known domesticated plants.
Evidence found by the research duo suggests that for wine too,
hundreds of today's grapes find their roots in "founder" varieties
descended from the wild grapes of the region.
Through DNA profiling, Vouillamoz says he has isolated 13 of these
"founder" grapes by tracing the family trees of European fine wine
grapes.
He believes farmers across southeast Anatolia or the Near East started
domesticating the wild Vitis vinifera grape around the same time --
giving rise to the 13 "founders".
This, he says, debunks the long-held notion that most Western European
grapes were introduced independently from the Middle East, Near East
or Egypt, Turkey or Greece, at different times and in different places.
One of the "founders", Gouais Blanc, is a good example.
"He gave birth to at least 80 varieties in western Europe, including
Chardonnay, Gamay, Furmint, and Riesling," said Vouillamoz, who
recently co-authored, "Wine Grapes," a monumental opus on 1,368 vine
varieties. "I call it the Casanova of grapes."
Standing in a gully between Elazig and Diyarbakir, Daniel O'Donnell,
chief winemaker at the Turkish winery Kayra, gestured to the great
expanse of mountains where wild grape vines still grow in gullies
and washes.
"It is a wine-making pilgrimage to come back here and find,
genetically, 8,000, 9,000-year old vines," said O'Donnell, who arrived
here from California in 2006.
"It's mind-blowing to be a Napa guy paying attention to the fine
details, the minutiae of wine making, and come here."
But this heritage is now under threat.
In the Kurdish Diyarbakir region, where women on subsistence farms tend
the vines and goats do the pruning, phylloxera is killing vineyards
that have not been grafted onto disease-resistant rootstock.
"Unfortunately, phylloxera has arrived here. Every year we see the
vines die," said Murat Uner, wine production manager at Kayra.
Phylloxera annihilated vineyards in Europe in the late 19th century.
Wild vines are somewhat protected by their eco-system, but cultivated
vines are extremely vulnerable.
"We explain it to them, but they don't want to listen," says Uner.
The frustration is shared by winemakers who are trying to develop
the Turkish wine industry, and experts who fear the loss of an
irreplaceable genetic diversity within these ancient varieties.
"They are incredibly lucky to have this," said Vouillamoz. "It has
been lost in many places."