Plantet is a red

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

grape variety that was one of the hybrid grape created by French physician and grape breeder

Albert Seibel Albert Seibel (1844–1936) was a French physician and viticulturist who made hybrid crosses of European wine grapes (''Vitis vinifera'') with native North American grapes. His crosses are known as Seibel grapes. Biography Seibel was born in A ...

. While the exact parentage of the grape is unknown, the most popular theories has it as a

cross A cross is a religious symbol consisting of two Intersection (set theory), intersecting Line (geometry), lines, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of t ...

of two

Seibel grapes Seibel grapes are a group of wine grape varieties which originated with the work of French viticulturist Albert Seibel crossing European wine grape with American grape species to increase disease resistance. They were planted widely in France duri ...

, Seibel 867 x Seibel 2524 with another theory speculating that Plantet's parentage was Seibel 4461 crossed with Berlandieri-Jacquez. J. Robinson ''Vines Grapes & Wines'' pg 199 Mitchell Beazley 1986 Plantet is grown primarily in the Loire Valley around Anjou and is known for its prolific yields. The variety is generally reliable and disease resistant, producing well even after suffering through a spring frost, however the berries tend to be difficult to crush which, along with the uprooting of hybrid varieties throughout France, has contributed to the variety's decline in the latter half of the 20th century.

History

Developed by grape breeder Albert Seibel in the late 19th century, Plantet's exact parentage in unknown though it very likely has at least one Seibel grape as a parent. For most of the 20th century, the variety was the most widely planted hybrid in the Loire Valley. Throughout France, the variety hit its peak in 1968 with more than 64,000 acres (26,000 hectares), almost exclusive to the Loire Valley and other scattered northern French wine regions.J. Robinson ''Jancis Robinson's Guide to Wine Grapes'' pg 147 Oxford University Press 1996 However, the later half of the 20th century saw Plantet caught up in the same disfavor that befell all hybrid grapes in France (most notably Villard noir, Baco noir and others). Aggressive vine pull schemes that included lucrative payments to growers for uprooting their vineyards and prohibition of using hybrid grapes in ''

Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée In France, the ''appellation d'origine contrôlée'' (, ; abbr. AOC ) is a label that identifies an agricultural product whose stages of production and processing are carried out in a defined geographical area – the ''terroir'' – and using ...

'' (AOC) wines contributed to a sharp decline for the grape variety. By the end of the 1980s there was less than 1,000 hectares of the grape throughout France.

Viticulture

Plantet was likely bred by Seibel to be a winter-hardy variety and to some extent it is. Growers in the Loire and many northern French wine regions found that the grape still produced high yields despite severe winters and late spring frost when many other varieties, particularly those of ''

Vitis vinifera ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine, is a species of flowering plant, native to the Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean region, Central Europe, and southwestern Asia, from Morocco and Portugal north to southern Germany and east to northern ...

'' would be severely damaged. But there is limit to this benefit with the cold making the berries more difficult to crush and the variety not performing well in regions such as

New York State New York, also called New York State, is a state in the northeastern United States. Bordered by New England to the east, Canada to the north, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the south, its territory extends into both the Atlantic Ocean and ...

after their harsh winters.

Synonyms

According to the Vitis International Variety Catalogue, the only known synonym for Plantet is original catalog name, Seibel 5455.Plantet
, Vitis International Variety Catalogue, Accessed: February 21st, 2011

References

Red wine grape varieties Seibel grapes {{Hybrid grape varieties