France might seem like the home of wine, but this wasn’t always the case. Wine drinking became a part of culture in the region from around 600 BCE, when the ancient Greeks founded a colony, Massalia (modern Marseilles) in the south of France. Wine drinking spread from here into inland France, but how? Bouby and colleagues examined the shapes of over 19,000 ancient grape seeds from sites across France to find out.
Bouby and colleagues found a dramatic shift in seed shape between the Bronze and Iron Ages, which coincides with southern France trading more with other Mediterranean cultures. Estimated berry sizes increased sharply during the Iron Age, reaching their peak in Roman times. Early French vineyards contained a mix of eastern and western European grape types. They also found that wild-like grapevines remained common in early vineyards, suggesting ongoing domestication processes.
The researchers analysed shapes and sizes of ancient grape seeds using imaging and statistical techniques. They then compared ancient seeds to a reference collection of modern wild and cultivated grape varieties. This allowed them to determine if seeds came from wild or domestic grapes and identify different variety groups.
This study provides the most comprehensive look yet at how grape varieties changed over time in ancient France. It shows viticulture spread from Mediterranean regions to northern France, with varieties adapted to new climates. It also shows that the people adopting viticulture were hardly passive in the process. The mix of grape types shows complex processes of trade, migration and local adaptation.
Despite thousands of registered varieties, current cultivated grape diversity may represent only a fraction of past diversity, that gradually concentrated around elite cultivars with close parental relationships. Surveys in historic wine regions may reveal the extent of ancient diversity in traditional agrosystems, including well-known regional and foreign varieties, as well as previously unknown varieties grown from seeds or cultivated V. sylvestris plants.
Bouby, L., Bonhomme, V., Ivorra, S., Bacilieri, R., Ben Makhad, S., Bonnaire, E., … & Terral, J. F. (2024). Seed morphometrics unravels the evolutionary history of grapevine in France. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 22207. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-72692-6 (OA)
