Jamie Goode: Are disease-resistant hybrid varieties going to become commonplace?
By Jamie Goode, 8 October 2024
Almost all the grape varieties wine is made from come from a single species: Vitis vinifera. But there’s a problem: two vine diseases came to France from America in the late 19th Century which vinifera varieties have no resistance to. As a result, vineyards must be sprayed with pesticides. These two diseases are downy and powdery mildew. The former is not a problem where there is no growing season rainfall; the latter is a problem everywhere. Viticulture is a very heavy user of pesticides and with it, repeated spraying causes soil compaction and raises the carbon footprint of grape production. As a result, there is now increased interest in new resistant varieties, made by hybridizing vinifera varieties with American and Asian varieties that contain resistance genes that reduce the need to spray by 80% or more. The question is: are we too wedded to our existing grape varieties to take these newcomers seriously?

A few weeks ago I visited the Rebschule Freytag nursery near Neustadt in Germany, where I met with the owner, Volker Freytag, and also Valentin Blattner, a grape breeder from Switzerland who has worked closely with Freytag since 1991, when Blattner developed the very successful hybrid Cabernet Blanc. Blattner began breeding resistant varieties which he then planted on his farm in Soyihères in the Jura mountains back in the 1980s. His first crossing was made in 1985 from a large vine growing on the wall of a house that was a hybrid that didn’t need spraying against grapevine diseases, and he began crossing this with vinifera varieties to make hybrids that are disease resistant, but which have desirable enological characteristics.
Blattner and Freytag showed us their experimental vineyards, where they try out new crossings. These crossings are made by removing the male parts of the vine flower in one variety, and then pollinating the female bit that’s left with the other variety. When grapes are produced, each will contain up to four seeds. Each of these seeds, if germinated, produce a new variety that’s a cross. If they are lucky, these crosses will have the resistance of the hybrid variety, plus they’ll make grapes that make wine that tastes nice. What follows is rounds of selection, some genetic testing (a bit like a Covid test, just to see which resistance genes are present), and then making some experimental wine from the new varieties (at this stage just numbers, not names) to check that these good-looking grapes are as promising as they seem.
We looked at the first selection seedlings, and then a more established vineyard planted with crosses of interest, and the comparison between these and Vitis vinifera vineyards next door was huge. As one of the reasons for this trial is to assess disease resistance, the crossings hadn’t been sprayed. Most had lush, green foliage, whereas the vinifera vineyards were ravaged with downy mildew despite having been sprayed 15 times that year. This was in late September, at the end of the growing season, where differences would be most stark, but it was illuminating. The grapes were still on the vine, and this allowed us to look at the crossings to see what sort of potential they had besides disease resistance. Clearly some were better than others, in terms of yield and cluster architecture, but it was so interesting to see this comparison. Blattner has some 3,000 new varieties here, another 3,000 at his home base in Switzerland, and a further 6,000 he’s developed with partners he’s working with in Spain.
Blattner’s journey started when, as a young man, he was sent from Basel to French-speaking Switzerland to learn French. He began working with a winegrower there, and loved it, apart from every Monday the vines would be sprayed with pesticides. So he bred his first vines in 1985. He wasn’t allowed to plant them, so he moved to the Swiss part of the Jura where no such restrictive rules were in place, and he planted a vineyard of resistant varieties. His work has continued, and now many of the successful resistant varieties are creations of his, including Satin Noir, Sauvignac, Cabernet Blanc, Cabertin and Pinotin.
Blattner is not alone. In France, the ResDur program started by Alain Boquet in the 1970s has yielded a range of modern crosses that have been accepted by the previously very resistant French authorities into the official catalogue, such as Voltis, Artaban, Floréal and Vidoc. Then there are breeding programs in Italy and Germany that have produced commercially interesting varieties. These are often marketed under the banner of PIWIs, an abbreviation of the German term “Pilzwiderstandsfähige Reben” – see here. The initial cross to create disease resistance is followed by a series of back-crossings with Vitis vinifera.
The story we hear is that hybrids were tried as a solution to phylloxera and then rejected because the wines tasted bad, and then when vineyards were replanted vignerons used vines grafted onto American rootstocks. But perhaps this story is a little simplistic. Of course, had the many French-American hybrids crossed in that first wave been capable of producing really good wine, then they would have been seen as the solution and grafting would never likely have been developed. But hybrids haven’t always been hated. Back in 1958, some 400,000 hectares of resistant varieties were planted in France, making up around 30% of the planted vineyard area (despite their plantation being officially banned in 1934). This was era when quantity was valued above all else. The demand was mostly for cheap, drinkable wine in vast volumes. This is something that the hybrids used at the time still delivered, and there’s still a widely planted hybrid (Baco 22A) in the vineyards of Cognac, since quantity rather than intrinsic wine quality is still demanded there. Since then, consumption in classic wine countries has gone down, and the hybrids were turned on as enemies of the quality revolution in France, where there were even some claiming that wines made from hybrids were dangerous to health.
Now the next-generation hybrids are becoming popular. The older hybrids were less sophisticated and had odd wine chemistry (typically high pH with high TA, and for reds low tannins, as well as high polysaccharides), and sometimes some unusual flavours. The genetics of the modern hybrids, which can often be 90% or more vinifera in their genomes, varies widely, and the problems of the past no longer apply. Freytag’s nursery business in now 60% resistant varieties and 40% vinifera, for example.
But can we get serious winegrowers to begin to work with them? The environmental benefits are huge. Especially for those who want to farm organically in cooler, damper climates, they are almost irresistible. The challenge is selling the wines to customers.
Planting a vineyard is a big commitment, but already many have taken the leap, even if it is just on a trial basis. I’ve tasted a lot of wines made from resistant varieties, and they have largely been really good. But they have mostly been either techno wines made in a very fruit forward style, or very natural wines with a different set of flavours (read about UK supermarket Tesco’s recent release of a wine from hybrid variety Floreal here). I’d love to see some more serious winegrowers work with them to expand the palette of what these varieties are capable of. My prediction is that if a few well reputed growers who make very fine wines begin to adopt them, and make stunning wines from them, then there will be a much wider acceptance.
- Jamie Goode is a London-based wine writer, lecturer, wine judge and book author. With a PhD in plant biology, he worked as a science editor, before starting wineanorak.com, one of the world’s most popular wine websites.
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