As viticulture and winemaking spread around the globe over thousands of years, so, too, did grape varieties. Naturally, as grapes crossed borders, their names may not have travelled with them, they may have been adapted to suit the local language, or perhaps they were changed due to a clerical error.
Pinot gris is a colour mutation of pinot noir (‘gris’ being French for ‘grey’), documented in Burgundy, as well as in Germany’s Rhineland, in the early 1700s. It eventually found its way to Northern Italy, although how and when is a point of conjecture. Nevertheless, the Italians, proud of their culture and language, used their own colour term (‘grigio’) for their version of the grape.
With different climates producing different styles – the French version being generally richer and more complex, the Italian lighter and fresher – this delineation is often now seen in other countries where the variety is grown, particularly Australia.
We see similar differences in the names of other grapes, where translation has resulted in a new name that's still quite close to the original. Some examples include: garnacha in Spain, grenache in France; cinsaut in France, sinsó in Spain; and riesling in Germany, rizling rajnski (Rhine riesling) in Croatia.
But what happens when someone writes the name wrong before transporting some vine material? This is a possibility with syrah, whose home is on the slopes of the Northern Rhône. When James Busby imported cuttings into Australia in 1832, they were marked as ‘scyras’ and ‘ciras’, and later on the variety came to be known in Australia as ‘shiraz’.
Much ink has been spilled in claiming that the Australian name is based on the Persian/Iranian city of Shiraz, and when Busby acquired the vine material in the Rhône, locals even spoke about the Persian connection, although this appears to be a falsehood.
Through DNA analysis in 1998, it was discovered that syrah’s parents are two grapes found almost exclusively in France – mondeuse blanche and dureza – so it’s highly unlikely that syrah made a journey of 5000km from Persia to France. As to how it came to be known as ‘shiraz’ in Australia, there are other theories.
In Vines, Grapes & Wine (1986), Jancis Robinson says that the change from syrah to scyras/ciras to shiraz was possibly one of bastardisation, or more specifically, strinisation – the Australian process of broadening vowels, mangling words, and making them our own. Fair dinkum.
It’s also likely a case of ‘lost in translation’, as syrah has been spelt a number of different ways even in France: ‘serine’, ‘sira’, ‘sirac’, ‘sirah’, ‘syra’ and ‘syrac’, among others. As with pinot gris/grigio, syrah/shiraz have also become associated with different styles: the former with cool climates, restraint and savouriness, the latter with warmer climates, boldness and fruitiness. But with all things wine, it’s not always so clear-cut.
When one grape is known by different names in different regions, if it eventually moves to other parts of the world, these various names usually stick – although they can pick up some additional monikers. This is certainly the case for monastrell, mourvèdre and mataro, which are all one and the same grape.
A native of Spain, the name monastrell is thought to derive from ‘monasteriellu’, meaning ‘little monastery’, and was grown predominantly in the Valencian region known as Camp de Morvedre. From there, it was introduced to Provence and adopted the name ‘mourvèdre’, and from the Spanish town of Mataró it moved to Roussillon, where it kept the name ‘mataro’.
When it was brought into Australia from Roussillon in the 1830s, the name mataro didn’t stick all that well, as it was also known as ‘balzac’ and ‘lambruscat’. Nowadays, you’ll also see the grape listed here as mourvèdre – but rarely as monastrell – either as a varietal wine or in a blend with grenache (or is that garnacha?) and shiraz (or is that syrah?).
Sometimes a grape will become popular under a name in one region until it is discovered that it is actually known somewhere else by a different, older name – or perhaps several other names. This is the case for primitivo, which was believed to be endemic to the Italian region of Puglia.
It was imported into the United States in the 1820s and took on the name ‘zinfandel’ which, like ‘scyras’ above, could have come about from the mislabelling of plant material. Even to this day, it’s unclear where this name originated and why it became the new name of this variety in America.
In the 1960s, Austin Goheen, an American plant pathologist, visited Puglia and noted how the region’s primitivo wines tasted very similarly to zinfandel. Cuttings were sent back to the University of California and it was established that the grapes had identical isozymes (a type of enzyme). In 1994, DNA profiling confirmed they were indeed the same variety.
However, for a long time it was thought primitivo had actually originated in Croatia and was in fact the indigenous grape ‘plavac mali’. Spurred into action, Carole Meredith, the grape geneticist who had validated the primitivo/zinfandel relationship, undertook a DNA analysis with Croatian colleagues of plant material from vines across the country, specifically to identify a connection between primitivo and plavac mali.
In a small vineyard north of the town of Split, a match for primitivo was found – not with plavac mali but with a local grape, ‘crljenak kaštelanski’. Further investigation revealed that all three grapes were actually one variety – tribidrag – which was first mentioned in the 1500s, well before primitivo/zinfandel/crljenak kaštelanski had been written about.
It’s one thing for a grape variety to have a few names across different countries and continents, and quite another for it to be known by dozens within a single region. You might know Tuscany’s most revered variety as ‘sangiovese’, but it has an intoxicating array of synonyms, many of which sound like types of coffee or pizza toppings: ‘morellino’, ‘pignolo’, ‘sangioveto’, ‘primaticcio’, ‘liliano’, ‘brunelletto’, ‘uva tosca’, and many, many others.
Part of this name diversification is due to the large number of clones of sangiovese that have arisen across the many areas in which it is grown, presenting variations in characteristics such as berry and bunch size, yield, skin thickness, and so on. As sangiovese is a cross between a Tuscan and a Calabrian grape (ciliegiolo and calabrese di montenuovo), pretty much every area in which it is grown between Tuscany and Calabria (and further afield) has their own name for it.
An even older grape resides in and rules over the northern Italian region of Piemonte: nebbiolo. It is said to be named after the Italian word for fog, ‘nebbia’, alluding to the natural bloom which covers the berries, rather than the atmospheric phenomenon. Nebbiolo first appeared in texts in the mid-13th century, so it’s understandable that it adopted different names over the years, purely due to its age and widespread use.
Nebbiolo is known by several other names, each employed for good reason but mostly with little linguistic relationship to each other: ‘chiavennasca’, used in the region of Valtellina, is named after the city of Chiavenna in Lombardia; ‘spanna’, meaning ‘hand’ or ‘span’ (possibly due to vilticulture), in Novara, east of Milan; and ‘picotendro’ and ‘picotener’, meaning ‘small and tender’ (related to the size of the berries and their delicate nature) in the Valle d’Aosta and Carema respectively. Only one, ‘prünent’, seen in the commune of Val d’Ossola, Piemonte, is synonymous with nebbiolo, as it stems from the Latin word ‘pruina’ (fog or bloom).
A few hundred kilometres east in the region Friuli-Venezia Giulia lived the Italian variety commonly known as ‘tocai friulano’, which rode the coattails of Hungary’s most famous wine, Tokaji, and its main constituent, the grape ‘furmint’. In 2007, winemakers were forced to remove ‘tocai’ from the name, simply becoming ‘friulano’. Many Italian growers insisted that tocai friulano was a distinct variety to furmint, and they were right – but not how they originally thought.
DNA analysis over 20 years ago found that friulano is actually the French variety ‘sauvignonasse’, at home in the Gironde area in Bordeaux. While Slovenian winemakers have taken to using the name with gusto, given how the Italians still proudly cling to pinot grigio and reject pinot gris, it’ll probably be a very long time until we see ‘sauvignonasse’ emblazoned on a bottle of Italian wine. And that’s okay, as no matter whether it’s pinot gris or grigio, syrah or shiraz, or monastrell, mourvèdre or mataro, it’s what’s inside the bottle that counts.
This article first appeared in issue #81 of Halliday magazine. Become a member to receive all four issues delivered to your door per year, plus digital access to over 185,000 tasting notes from 4000+ wineries and distilleries, and much more.
