Italian grape mysteries unravelled

José Vouillamoz, a Swiss specialist in DNA profiling of grapevines already known to purple pagers, announced last week that he and his colleague Stella Grando at the Istituto Agrario di San Michele all'Adige have identified the parents of Italy's most planted red wine vine Sangiovese.

Italian researchers had already established a close link between Sangiovese and the Tuscan 'cherry grape' Ciliegiolo back in 2002. Vouillamoz, a grapevine geneticist who has compiled what may be the world's largest database of DNA profiles of grapevines, tested the hypothesis that Ciliegiolo was the parent of Sangiovese but was unable to identify the other...