Red grape
Abouriou
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.
Abouriou is a black French grape that Wine Grapes proposes as an offspring of Magdeleine Noire des Charentes, which would make it a half-sibling of Merlot and Malbec.
Abouriou is a black grape from France (VIVC passport 34), whose other names in VIVC include “Gamay Beaujolais” and “Plant Abouriou”. VIVC records no parents for it. Wine Grapes (2012) draws it as an offspring of Magdeleine Noire des Charentes and an unknown partner, probably extinct, and notes that the inverse is possible. The link is proposed. If it holds, Abouriou is a half-sibling of Merlot and Malbec, the 2 Bordeaux grapes that DNA markers show to descend from Magdeleine. A 2017 thesis by Camille Jollard lists Abouriou among Magdeleine’s offspring and cites the 2009 study by Boursiquot and colleagues; that study’s abstract does not name it.
Abouriou has reached the Gironde as a trial vine. It grows in the upper plot of the La Tour Carnet 2050 experimental vineyard at Saint-Laurent-Médoc, where Marc Plantevin scored its leaves and bunches for downy mildew on July 23, 2023, for his 2025 thesis on new varieties for Bordeaux. Its wines carry rotundone, the compound behind peppery aromas, as Culleré and colleagues reported in 2016. Worldwide, Kym Anderson and Signe Nelgen counted 310 ha of Abouriou in 2016, against 419 ha in 2000.
Oldest record in my library: “Abouriou”, 1903, in Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel, Ampélographie, vol. 4 (around Villeréal, Lot-et-Garonne, citing Victor Pulliat, 1897); M. Baroň and colleagues, study of rosé wines, 2010 (as a recorded parent of the Slovak variety Nitra)
The family
Magdeleine Noire des Charentes proposed; direction uncertain
Abouriou
- Robinson, Harding & Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes (2012), pedigree diagram; no pedigree on VIVC 34; inverse possible
The discovery: In 2012, Wine Grapes drew Abouriou as an offspring of Magdeleine Noire des Charentes, a link still proposed.
The names
Other names in VIVC: Beaujolais, Gamay Beaujolais, Gamay Du Rhone, Gamay Saint Laurent, Loubejac, Malbec Argente, Negret De La Canourgue, Noir Hatif, Plant Abouriou, Plant De Nauge, Plant Precoce, Precoce Nauge, Precoce Noir, Pressac De Bourgogne.
In today’s rules
Not named in the rules of any Bordeaux appellation today.
Sources
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, passport id 34, accessed October 2026
- Robinson, Harding & Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes (2012), pedigree diagrams
- Camille Jollard, La Flavescence Dorée de la vigne (PhD thesis), 2017, https://theses.hal.science/tel-01718515v1
- Boursiquot, J.-M. et al. (2009), 'Parentage of Merlot and related winegrape cultivars of southwestern France: discovery of the missing link', Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research 15 (2):144-155 (abstract as read does not name Abouriou)
- Marc Plantevin, L'exploration de la diversité variétale en production viticole à fin d'adaptation au changement climatique, PhD thesis 2025, https://theses.hal.science/tel-04988263v1; Figure S7, downy mildew on leaves and bunches, La Tour Carnet 2050 plot 'Haut', July 23, 2023
- Olivier Geffroy, Arômes poivrés des vins et rotundone (thesis), 2020, citing Culleré et al. 2016
- Kym Anderson & Signe Nelgen, Which Winegrape Varieties Are Grown Where? A Global Empirical Picture, 2020, Tables 13 and 14
- M. Baroň, M. Kumsta, P. Bábíková & R. Sotolář, 'Interspecific vs. traditional varieties for rosé wines production', 2010
- Pierre Viala & Victor Vermorel, Ampélographie, t. IV, Paris, Masson, 1903, Abouriou
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, accessed October 2026
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