White grape
Blanc Auba
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. “ahn” is a nasal vowel: say it through the nose, with no n. The recording is the reference.
Blanc Auba is a late white grape of the Gironde coteaux, once the base of the good vineyards of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont and still grown there and at Cadillac in 1874; its grapes resisted noble rot, and no modern name is known for it.
Blanc Auba is a white grape known only from the southwest of France. G. Cazeaux-Cazalet, in its monograph for Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel’s Ampélographie (1902), found it in Dupré de Saint-Maur’s 18th-century tables for Marmande, Bazas, and Libourne, and quoted the baron de Secondat that it made “the base of the good vines of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont.” He described red, very straight canes, pale leaves, and large, very white berries flecked with russet, a look so distinct, he wrote, that it could not have hidden for long under another name. No VIVC passport has been matched to it, so its identity as a distinct vine is likely.
André Jullien, the Paris wine merchant whose Topographie de tous les vignobles connus first appeared in 1816, named the “auba” with sauvignon and sémillon among the grapes of the white wines of Barsac, Preignac, and Sauternes. Cazeaux-Cazalet adds what set it apart: it ripened late, took noble rot only with difficulty, and kept sound on the vine, so that its grapes could be sold as late table fruit in November. He says that 50 years before he wrote, it made up a quarter of the white vineyard of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont and the canton of Cadillac; phylloxera destroyed the old vineyards, and by 1902 only a few vines remained in grafted plantings.
Some growers wanted it back. Cazeaux-Cazalet reports that M. Dezeimeris and other respected viticulturists judged its neglect “unjustified” and proposed it at one eighth of the vineyard in the plains, where insects were ravaging the Sémillon, Sauvignon, and Muscadelle. In 1893 Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret gave it as “Blanc-Auba (Saint-Émilion-des-Charentes)”, a Charentes name of the Ugni Blanc; Cazeaux-Cazalet called that pairing a mistake of certain ampelographers. The 1922 edition still notes that one “also meets” the Blanc-Aouba.
Oldest record in my library: “blanc auba”, 1736, in abbé Bellet’s catalog of the vines of Bordeaux and Cadillac, as printed in Viala and Vermorel, Ampélographie, vol. 1, 1910; Dupré de Saint-Maur’s 18th-century tables (Bazas and Libourne) and the baron de Secondat, as reported by Auguste Petit-Lafitte (1868) and Viala and Vermorel (1902); first direct record: André Jullien, Topographie de tous les vignobles connus, 1816
The family
Parents unknown.
Blanc Auba
The names
As the Gironde books wrote it: Blanc-Aouba, auba, Vauba, blancaubat.
Old names: Blanc-Auba (open)
In today’s rules
Not named in the rules of any Bordeaux appellation today.
In the books
“The white wines of Barsac, Preignac, and Sauterne are made from a mixture of the vines called sauvignon, semilion blanc, auba, and a few others”
Les vins blancs de Barsac, de Preignac et de Sauterne, sont produits par le mélange des plants dits sauvignon 3 semilion blanc , auba et quelques autres
“M. de Secondat names this grape as the chief source of the justly esteemed wine of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont, where it ripens toward the beginning of November.”
M. de Secondat cite ce cépage comme produisant principalement le vin justement estimé de Sainte - Croix - du - Mont , où il parvient à maturité vers le commencement de novembre .
“Blanc-Auba (Saint-Émilion-des-Charentes).”
Blanc - Auba ( Saint - Émilion - des - Charentes ) .
“It survived in appreciable quantity in the old white vineyards of the Gironde slopes until phylloxera wiped them out.”
Il a subsisté en quantité appréciable dans les anciennes vignes blanches des coteaux de la Gironde jusqu'au moment où le Phylloxéra les a anéanties.
Sources
- André Jullien, Topographie de tous les vignobles connus, 1st ed., 1816, Gironde
- Auguste Petit-Lafitte, La vigne dans le Bordelais, 1868, 'K. Le Blanc Auba', citing the baron de Secondat
- Charles Cocks & Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 6th ed., 1893, 'Cépages de vignes blanches', p. 25
- Pierre Viala & Victor Vermorel (eds.), Traité général de viticulture: Ampélographie, vol. 3, 1902, 'Blanc Auba' by G. Cazeaux-Cazalet, pp. 258-260, citing Dupré de Saint-Maur's Tableaux de la synonymie de la vigne and Secondat
- Charles Cocks & Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 9th ed., 1922, 'Ampélographie', p. 17
- Pierre Viala & Victor Vermorel, Ampélographie, t. I, Paris, Masson, 1910, 'Histoire de l'ampélographie' (Tallavignes), p. 537 note, printing abbé Bellet's 1736 catalog of the vines of Bordeaux and Cadillac (dated 1736 by Petit-Lafitte, La vigne dans le Bordelais, 1868)
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