Aramon (grape)
Encyclopedia
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. Aramon has also been grown in Algeria
and Argentina
, but nowhere else did it ever reach the popularity it used to have in the south of France.
It is most noted for its very high productivity, and yields
can reach levels as high as 400 hectolitres per hectare
. The vine's resistance to oidium
, phylloxera
, and powdery mildew
lead to its reputation as workhorse grape that could be relied on by growers for dependable financial returns. However, when cropped at high yields, the resultant wines are very light red in colour (but show a blue-black tinge), low in alcohol and extract and generally thin on character. Such Aramon wine is often blended with wine from grapes of darker color such as Alicante Bouschet
and Grand Noir de la Calmette
to darken the resulting wine.
If planted on poor soils and pruned very severely to much smaller yields, it has been shown to be able to give concentrated wines with spicy, earthy, herbaceous, and somewhat rustic character. However, such Aramon wines are extremely rare, but some varietal wine is still produced in Languedoc.
A viticultural drawback of Aramon is that it buds
early and ripens late, which means that it only is suitable for growing in hotter regions, and that it is very sensitive to spring frost.
. As an indication of the wine industry boom of the era, the vineyards of the Hérault
department (one part of Languedoc) more than doubled between 1849 and 1869, when they covered a massive 214000 hectares (528,805 acre). Thus, in this department alone, a vineyard surface somewhat larger than that of the entire Bordeaux
region of today was added in 20 years, most of it planted with Aramon.
The wine produced was undistinguished, but it was produced cheaply and in huge quantities. The simple reds of Languedoc initially competed with equally simple reds made closer to Paris
, in areas where most of the wine production disappeared in the early 20th century due to the combined effect of competition and phylloxera. Thus, the wines were not made in a mold that wine consumers of the late 20th and early 21st century would have recognised as a typical "warm climate" style, but rather outmatched other thin red wines by means of sheer volume and lower production costs. Such wines were primarily drunk as everyday table wine
by French workers, and they were known as petit rouge – small reds.
Since high-yielding Aramon gives one of the least coloured wines that still pass as red, the practice of blending such wines with wines from teinturier
grapes such as Alicante Bouschet was a measure used to give them a measure of increased credibility as reds.
Later, Aramon-based light red wines got competition on the French market from cheap red wines from North Africa
, primarily from the then-French colony of Algeria
. Algerian wine
s, produced primarily from Carignan, had more colour, alcohol and concentration than the typical Languedoc wines of the era. Since these characteristics were attractive to consumers, it became common in the 20th century to blend cheap wines from the south of France with Algerian and other North African wines.
These characters lead to a decreased popularity of Aramon in France from the mid-20th century. This trend was reinforced when the French vineyards were hit by frost in 1956 and 1963, which hit the frost-sensitive Aramon particularly hard. Aramon was primarily replaced with Carignan, which overtook Aramon as France's most grown grape variety in the 1960s.
In 2000, there remained 9100 hectares (22,486.6 acre) of Aramon in France, primarily in the Hérault, with a rapidly decreasing trend.
and Couderc, Aramon is not a hybrid
but rather a Vitis vinifera
. Some have proposed that Aramon originated in Spain
, but DNA
typing has revealed Gouais blanc
to be one of its parents, with the other parent so far unidentified. This parentage is more typical of French or Germanic varieties, but given its heat-demanding viticultural characteristics, it is unlikely to have survived in cultivation in a colder region. Therefore, its origin could very well be southern France.
Aramon was used extensively by the early French hybridizers in crosses with American grape species like Vitis rupestris
and Vitis aestivalis
as a source of good viticultural characteristics, and proved a better parent than many of the better known V. vinifera cultivars. Its reputation for mediocre wine quality has however haunted many of the resulting hybrids.
Aramon was also a parent of the ill-fated AxR1 rootstock, which is "Aramon x Rupestris Ganzin No. 1". AxR1 caused much problems in the Californian wine industry.
s Aramon Blanc and Aramon Gris also exist, and small plantations can still be found in the Hérault.
Synonyms for Aramon Blanc include Aramon Panche, Brom, Dangedokskii Belyi, Eramoul, Feher Aramon, Game Provansalskii, Langedokskii Belyi, Ochsenauge Weiss, Weißer Ochsenauge.
Aramon Gris is known under the synonym Szürke Aramon.
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
grape
Grape
A grape is a non-climacteric fruit, specifically a berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or they can be used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, molasses and grape seed oil. Grapes are also...
grown primarily in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan 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. Aramon has also been grown in Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, but nowhere else did it ever reach the popularity it used to have in the south of France.
It is most noted for its very high productivity, and yields
Yield (wine)
In viticulture, the yield is a measure of the amount of grapes or wine that is produced per unit surface of vineyard, and is therefore a type of crop yield...
can reach levels as high as 400 hectolitres per hectare
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
. The vine's resistance to oidium
Oidium
This article is about a type of fungal spore. For the ascomycete genus, see Oidium . For the fungus that causes powdery mildew on grapes, see Uncinula necator....
, phylloxera
Phylloxera
Grape phylloxera ; originally described in France as Phylloxera vastatrix; equated to the previously described Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, Phylloxera vitifoliae; commonly just called phylloxera is a pest of commercial grapevines worldwide, originally native to eastern North America...
, and powdery mildew
Powdery mildew
Powdery mildew is a fungal disease that affects a wide range of plants. Powdery mildew diseases are caused by many different species of fungi in the order Erysiphales. It is one of the easier diseases to spot, as its symptoms are quite distinctive. Infected plants display white powdery spots on the...
lead to its reputation as workhorse grape that could be relied on by growers for dependable financial returns. However, when cropped at high yields, the resultant wines are very light red in colour (but show a blue-black tinge), low in alcohol and extract and generally thin on character. Such Aramon wine is often blended with wine from grapes of darker color such as 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 Grand Noir de la Calmette
Grand Noir de la Calmette
Grand Noir de la Calmette is a red wine hybrid grape created by Henri Bouschet as a cross between Aramon and Petit Bouschet. The grape was named after the breeding station it was developed at, Domaine de la Calmette. The grape acts as a teinturier in adding color to wines that it is blended into...
to darken the resulting wine.
If planted on poor soils and pruned very severely to much smaller yields, it has been shown to be able to give concentrated wines with spicy, earthy, herbaceous, and somewhat rustic character. However, such Aramon wines are extremely rare, but some varietal wine is still produced in Languedoc.
A viticultural drawback of Aramon is that it buds
Budding
Budding is a form of asexual reproduction in which a new organism grows on another one. The new organism remains attached as it grows, separating from the parent organism only when it is mature. Since the reproduction is asexual, the newly created organism is a clone and is genetically identical...
early and ripens late, which means that it only is suitable for growing in hotter regions, and that it is very sensitive to spring frost.
History
When the south of France - Le Midi - was connected by railways to the more industrial and populous north of the country in the 19th century, the cost of transporting wines and other goods decreased considerably. Previously, waterways had provided the best transportation routes for wine, and only more expensive wines had been able to bear the cost of long overland transport. In the resulting 19th century vineyard expansion of southern France, Aramon became the grape variety of choice in LanguedocLanguedoc
Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...
. As an indication of the wine industry boom of the era, the vineyards of the Hérault
Hérault
Hérault is a department in the south of France named after the Hérault river.-History:Hérault is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...
department (one part of Languedoc) more than doubled between 1849 and 1869, when they covered a massive 214000 hectares (528,805 acre). Thus, in this department alone, a vineyard surface somewhat larger than that of the entire Bordeaux
Bordeaux wine
A Bordeaux wine is any wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Average vintages produce over 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine, ranging from large quantities of everyday table wine, to some of the most expensive and prestigious wines in the world...
region of today was added in 20 years, most of it planted with Aramon.
The wine produced was undistinguished, but it was produced cheaply and in huge quantities. The simple reds of Languedoc initially competed with equally simple reds made closer to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, in areas where most of the wine production disappeared in the early 20th century due to the combined effect of competition and phylloxera. Thus, the wines were not made in a mold that wine consumers of the late 20th and early 21st century would have recognised as a typical "warm climate" style, but rather outmatched other thin red wines by means of sheer volume and lower production costs. Such wines were primarily drunk as everyday table wine
Table wine
Table wine is a wine term with two different meanings: a wine style; and a quality level within wine classification.In the United States, table wine primarily designates a wine style - ordinary wine which is neither fortified nor sparkling....
by French workers, and they were known as petit rouge – small reds.
Since high-yielding Aramon gives one of the least coloured wines that still pass as red, the practice of blending such wines with wines from 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...
grapes such as Alicante Bouschet was a measure used to give them a measure of increased credibility as reds.
Later, Aramon-based light red wines got competition on the French market from cheap red wines from North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
, primarily from the then-French colony of Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
. Algerian wine
Algerian wine
Algerian wine is wine made from the North African country of Algeria. While not a significant force on the world's wine market today, Algeria has played an important role in the history of wine. Algeria's viticultural history dates back to its settlement by the Phoenicians and continued under...
s, produced primarily from Carignan, had more colour, alcohol and concentration than the typical Languedoc wines of the era. Since these characteristics were attractive to consumers, it became common in the 20th century to blend cheap wines from the south of France with Algerian and other North African wines.
These characters lead to a decreased popularity of Aramon in France from the mid-20th century. This trend was reinforced when the French vineyards were hit by frost in 1956 and 1963, which hit the frost-sensitive Aramon particularly hard. Aramon was primarily replaced with Carignan, which overtook Aramon as France's most grown grape variety in the 1960s.
In 2000, there remained 9100 hectares (22,486.6 acre) of Aramon in France, primarily in the Hérault, with a rapidly decreasing trend.
Origin and offspring
Despite its similarities to the hybrids Villard NoirVillard Noir
Villard grapes are French wine hybrid grape created by French horticulturalist Bertille Seyve and his father-in-law Victor Villard . They include the dark skin Villard noir and the white-wine variety Villard blanc with both being members of the Seyve-Villard grape family...
and Couderc, Aramon is not a hybrid
Hybrid grapes
Hybrid grapes are grape varieties that are the product of a crossing of two or more Vitis species. This is in contrast to crossings between grape varieties of the same species, typically Vitis vinifera, the European grapevine. Hybrid grapes are also referred to as inter-specific crossings...
but rather a 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....
. Some have proposed that Aramon originated in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, but DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
typing has revealed Gouais blanc
Gouais Blanc
Gouais Blanc or Weißer Heunisch is a white grape variety that is seldom grown today but is important as the ancestor of many traditional French and German grape varieties. The name Gouais derives from the old French adjective ‘gou’, a term of derision befitting its traditional status as the grape...
to be one of its parents, with the other parent so far unidentified. This parentage is more typical of French or Germanic varieties, but given its heat-demanding viticultural characteristics, it is unlikely to have survived in cultivation in a colder region. Therefore, its origin could very well be southern France.
Aramon was used extensively by the early French hybridizers in crosses with American grape species like 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. ...
and Vitis aestivalis
Vitis aestivalis
Vitis aestivalis is a species of grape native to eastern North America from southern Ontario east to Vermont, west to Oklahoma, and south to Florida and Texas. It is a vigorous vine, growing to 10 m or more high in trees...
as a source of good viticultural characteristics, and proved a better parent than many of the better known V. vinifera cultivars. Its reputation for mediocre wine quality has however haunted many of the resulting hybrids.
Aramon was also a parent of the ill-fated AxR1 rootstock, which is "Aramon x Rupestris Ganzin No. 1". AxR1 caused much problems in the Californian wine industry.
Synonyms
Synonyms for Aramon include Aramon Chernyi, Aramon Negro, Aramon Noir, Aramon Pignat, Aramon Pigne, Aramon Rozovyi, Aramon Saint Joseph, Aramone, Aramonen, Aramont, Arramont, Burchardt's Prince, Burckarti Prinz, Burkhardt, Eramoul, Eromoul, Gros Bouteillan, Kek Aramon, Pisse-Vin, Plant Riche, Rabalairé, Ramonen, Reballairé, Reballayre, Revalaire, Revellaire, Ugni Neru, Ugni Nevu, Ugni Noir, Uni Negre, Uni Noir.Aramon Blanc and Aramon Gris
The lighter-coloured mutationMutation
In molecular biology and genetics, mutations are changes in a genomic sequence: the DNA sequence of a cell's genome or the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. They can be defined as sudden and spontaneous changes in the cell. Mutations are caused by radiation, viruses, transposons and mutagenic...
s Aramon Blanc and Aramon Gris also exist, and small plantations can still be found in the Hérault.
Synonyms for Aramon Blanc include Aramon Panche, Brom, Dangedokskii Belyi, Eramoul, Feher Aramon, Game Provansalskii, Langedokskii Belyi, Ochsenauge Weiss, Weißer Ochsenauge.
Aramon Gris is known under the synonym Szürke Aramon.