Alicante Ganzin is a red French wine

French wine

French wine is produced in several regions throughout France, in quantities between 50 and 60 million hectolitres per year, or 7–8 billion bottles. France has the world's second-largest total vineyard area, behind Spain, and is in the position of being the world's largest wine producer...

 grape variety. Unlike most Vitis vinifera

Vitis vinifera

Vitis vinifera is a species of Vitis, native to the Mediterranean region, central Europe, and southwestern Asia, from Morocco and Portugal north to southern Germany and east to northern Iran....

wine grapes, Alicante Ganzin is a teinturier

Teinturier

Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain, is a wine term applied to grapes whose flesh and juice is red in colour due to anthocyanin pigments accumulating within the pulp of the grape berry itself. In most cases, anthocyanin pigments are confined to the outer skin tissue only, and...

 with dark flesh that produces red juice. Most varieties used to produce red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Canada's Okanagan Valley to Lebanon's Beqaa Valley...

, Syrah, etc., have clear color flesh and juice with the wine receiving its color through a maceration

Maceration (wine)

Maceration is the winemaking process where the phenolic materials of the grape— tannins, coloring agents and flavor compounds— are leached from the grape skins, seeds and stems into the must. Maceration is the process by which the red wine receives its red color, since 99% of all grape juice is...

 process where the color seeps out of the grape skins for as long as they are in contact with the juice. Alicante Ganzin can thusly produce light red and rose colored wine without maceration. It is believed that Alicante Ganzin is often described as the progenitor of all French teinturier grapes.

History

While Alicante Ganzin is believed by ampelographers to be the progenitor of all French teinturiers, the exact origins of the grape variety are not clear. Some, such as wine expert Jancis Robinson

Jancis Robinson

Jancis Mary Robinson OBE, MW is a British wine critic, journalist and editor of wine literature. She currently writes a weekly column for the Financial Times, and writes for her website jancisrobinson.com...

, describes the grape as a cross of Alicante Bouschet

Alicante Bouschet

Alicante Bouschet or Alicante Henri Bouschet is a wine grape variety that has been widely cultivated since 1866. It is a cross of Petit Bouschet and Grenache. Alicante is a teinturier, a grape with red flesh. It is one of the few teinturier grapes that belong to the Vitis vinifera species...

 and a hybrid of a Vitis rupestris

Vitis rupestris

Vitis rupestris is a kind of grape native to the Southern and Western United States that is known by many common names including July, sand, sugar, beach, bush, currant, ingar, rock, and mountain grape. It is used for breeding several French-American hybrids as well as many root stocks. ...

variety and Vitis vinifera

Vitis vinifera

Vitis vinifera is a species of Vitis, native to the Mediterranean region, central Europe, and southwestern Asia, from Morocco and Portugal north to southern Germany and east to northern Iran....

grape Aramon

Aramon (grape)

Aramon or Aramon Noir is a variety of red wine grape grown primarily in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. Between the late 19th century and the 1960s, it was France's most grown grape variety, but plantings of Aramon have been in continuous decline since the mid-20th century...

 known as Aramon Rupestris Ganzin No.4. This is the parentage attributed to the variety by the Vitis International Variety Catalogue

Vitis International Variety Catalogue

The Vitis International Variety Catalogue is a database of various species and varieties/cultivars of grapevine, the genus Vitis. VIVC is administered by the Geilweilerhof Institute for Grape Breeding in Siebeldingen, Germany, and contains information from grapevine collections existing in...

, which date the grape's creation to 1886 by private grape breeder Victor Ganzin.

Offspring

In 1958, University of California, Davis

University of California, Davis

The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...

 viticulturist Dr. Harold Olmo

Harold Olmo

Dr. Harold Olmo was a pioneering viticulturalist and professor at the University of California, Davis where he created many new grape varieties known today as Olmo grapes. In the 1950s, he helped to establish California's first quarantine facility on the UC-Davis campus to permit California...

 crossed Alicante Ganzin with the Portuguese wine

Portuguese wine

Portuguese wine is the result of traditions introduced to the region by ancient civilizations, such as the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and mostly the Romans. Portugal started to export its wines to Rome during the Roman Empire. Modern exports developed with trade to England after the...

 grape variety Tinta Cão

Tinta Cão

Tinta Cão is a red Portuguese wine grape variety that has been grown primarily in the Douro region since the sixteenth century. The vine produces very low yields which has led it close to extinction despite the high quality of wine that it can produce. Improvements in bilateral cordon training and...

 to produce the red-fleshed variety Rubired that is often used a coloring agent in red wine blends.