Archaeogenetics lab project exposes the humble origins of some well known wines.

Matt_Lawes A paper recently published by Harriet Hunt et al. in Biology Letters employs some of the archaeo-genetics approaches developed in the Glyn Daniel Laboratory to probe the ancestry of some familiar wine grapes. These grapes, which include the very familiar Chardonnay, trace their maternal ancestry to the supposedly inferior Gouais grape, a variety widely grown in parts of Europe during the mediaeval period but considered so poor quality that it came close to being banned. The significance of this finding is that the maternal ancestor actually contributes the majority of the genetic material in the resulting varieties.

Hunt H.V., M.C.Lawes, M.A.Bower, J.W.Heger and C.J.Howe 2009. A banned variety was the mother of several major wine grapes. Biology Letters doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.0810

Left: Matt Lawes carries out grape variety analyses in the Glyn Daniel Laboratory