© Louis Dasselborne

The world has thousands of grape varieties, yet modern wine production relies on a remarkably small number of them. Climate change, new diseases, changing consumer tastes and the need for more sustainable viticulture are now challenging this model. Should we continue planting the same international varieties everywhere, move towards local and forgotten grapes, create new disease-resistant varieties, or look again at the enormous genetic diversity that already exists within Vitis vinifera?

In this webinar, José will explore what the vineyards of the future might look like, drawing on genetics, history and examples from wine regions around the world. By a happy coincidence, the webinar takes place around the publication of his new book Grape Varieties: Their Future, which explores these questions in greater depth and looks at how grape diversity could help viticulture face the challenges of the coming decades.

Biography

Dr José Vouillamoz is a Swiss grape geneticist and one of the world’s leading authorities on the origin and identification of grape varieties. He trained in grape DNA profiling at the University of California, Davis, and is the co-author, with Jancis Robinson MW and Julia Harding MW, of Wine Grapes, the reference work covering 1,368 vine varieties.

He is also the author of Swiss Grapes, Cépages Suisses – Histoires et Origines and Grands Cépages d’Origine Française. He works internationally as a speaker, researcher and consultant on grape diversity, genetics and ampelography. His new book, Grape Varieties: Their Future, will be published by the International Wine & Food Society, in the Autumn.

To register, follow the link below. Guests will be very welcome, but please let Andrea know their names.

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/H3We19oMRM-SXLJ0JW3Dfw 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. We look forward to seeing you then.

If you can’t attend the live session, there will be a recording available to watch afterwards on the Circle’s YouTube channel (links to this and earlier sessions are in the members’ area of the website).

Helen Savage, CWW online events organiser