GENE detectives say that the grape that produces the Californian red wine
Zinfandel does not originate from southern Italy as most people believe. It is
probably the offspring of an unidentified Croatian grape.
Grape varieties are developed by hybridising different “parent” vines. These
are then propagated through cuttings, so a Chardonnay growing in California
should be genetically identical to the vine in France from which it was
originally taken. Yet the origins of most grape varieties remain a mystery.
Using DNA fingerprinting, wine geneticist Carole Meredith of the University
of California at Davis has traced the parentage of a number…
