Comprehensive Notes on Foundation Plant Services Varietal Strains?

Has anyone ever tried to catalogue some of the flavor profiles of the varietal strains at Foundation Plant Services?

Here is a list of their current offerings:

Chardonnay [62 strains?] & Pinot Noir [76 strains?] look absolutely hopeless to me - you could spend a entire lifetime just pondering one of those varietals.

But take something a little more manageable, like, say, Syrah & Shiraz:

Syrah: 04, 05, 07, 08, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, ENTAV-INRA ® 99, ENTAV-INRA ® 100, ENTAV-INRA ® 300, ENTAV-INRA ® 471, ENTAV-INRA ® 525, ENTAV-INRA ® 877

Shiraz: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09

Has anyone ever tried to figure out which one of those is going to taste the most like a Mollydooker Velvet Glove, and which one is going to taste the most like a Guigal La Mouline?

Or take Riesling as another example:

Riesling: 01, 04, 09, 10, 12, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22

Which one of those might taste like a JJ Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr, or a Helmut Donnhoff Hermannshohle, or a Trimbach CFE, or a Hirtzberger Singerriedel?

And, in general, is this stuff common knowledge, or is it closely-guarded “Inside Baseball” proprietary value-added deep voodoo [no padawan apprentices allowed]?

Thanks.

All seriousness- none of these will taste anything like those wines unless they are grown in those places (and, secondarily, vinified in a similar manner).

John’s right . . . for a change (just kidding neener ). Site characteristics (e.g., soil and climate) and vine management will blurr the differences that might otherwise exist in the sensory characteristics of different clones. I’ll give you a six pack of John’s best beer if you can tell in a blind tasting the 828, Pommard, Mt. Eden and 115 from my site as opposed to the same clones grown from a site down south (Central Coast) or up north (Oregon). Heck, even if you could grow the stuff so that it was true to its (supposed) clonal taste or aroma characteristics, the damn winemakers would find a way to screw it all up. [tease.gif]

Yeah. We suck, don’t we? [wow.gif]

But we love you nonetheless flirtysmile

But has anyone ever tried to make any [even grossly simplistic] generalizations about the various strains?

For instance, suppose you had a varietal V, with varietal strains VS0, VS1, VS2, VS3, and VS4.

Have there been any [hypothetical] classifications like the following:

HYPOTHETICAL: “All other things being equal, the sugar production of these varietal strains is ordered, from least sugar, to most sugar, as: VS3, VS1, VS2, VS0, VS4”.

Or even just:

HYPOTHETICAL: “All other things being equal [to include identical pruning methods], the tonnage per acre of these varietal strains is ordered, from least tonnage, to most tonnage, as: VS2, VS4, VS0, VS3, VS1”.

BTW, if no one has ever sought to make a comprehensive database of varietal strain characteristics [and made the data public, i.e. not retained it as private, proprietary information*], then I’d be interested in starting a website & a database where people could start to accumulate that kind of information.



*My guess would be that the industrial-sized outfits [shipping millions, or tens of millions of cases per year] probably keep databases of this stuff, but I am beginning to suspect that they view it as being a proprietary trade secret.

You’d have to do a little research, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find out where these clones came from. The Entav-INRA clones usually have pretty good notes associated with them out there…

Nathan, Steve is correct. ENTAV attributes certain yield and quality characteristics to the Dijon Pinot clones that it licenses for distribution. I believe that ENTAV’s data source, however, is made up exclusively of observations, trials, etc. in France. If you spend enough time online, you will also come across alot of anecdotal evidence regarding how various clones perform in different grape growing regions.

Information about vine performance is probably more reliable for rootstocks than it is for clones. Even then, take what you hear with a big grain of salt unless you know the circumstances under which the observations were made. If the growing conditions are right, a rootstock that someone characterizes as “low vigor” may be nothing of the sort when planted at your site.

What I know about clonal performance I have cobbled together from information online, discussions with growers and winemakers in my region, and personal experience. Good viticulture consultants in your locale, however, will know a heck of alot more about the subject than either you or me could learn on our own.

Either Sunridge or Duarte has a multi-page chart showing the generalized difference between the clonal selections they offer. I picked one up a few years ago at the UGS.

The Zinfandel selections of FPS:

John Caldwell took a stab at it almost 20 years ago – “A Concise Guide to Clones for Wine Professionals,” or something like that (lost my copy). It wasn’t as nuanced as identifying particular flavors, but it did cover productiveness, cluster morphology and general ratings with tasting panels. It would be nice to find an updated version.