White grape
Verdet Blanc
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. “ahn” is a nasal vowel: say it through the nose, with no n. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.
Blanc Verdet is an old late white of the Gironde whose bunches stay green at maturity; the books follow it from the 18th-century Sauternais to the 1922 guide, as a common vine that the Graves still counted among their main whites.
Blanc Verdet, Verdet Blanc in VIVC, is a white grape whose name describes it. M. du Puits de Maconex, a grower at Gradignan, in his Guide du propriétaire de vigne (1850), noted bunches “always green at maturity.” G. Cazeaux-Cazalet, who wrote its monograph for Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel’s Ampélographie (1901 to 1910), went further: no grape of the Gironde seemed to keep its green color with the same hold and intensity, leaves and bunches alike, to the end of the harvest. VIVC records no parents. The identity of the old Gironde name with Verdet Blanc is likely, and the name must not be read as the black Verdot.
Its reputation was poor from the start of the record. Cazeaux-Cazalet reported in 1902 that Dupré de Saint-Maur’s 1783 tables of vine synonyms placed it at Marmande and in the white vineyards of the Sauternais, where his correspondents already called it “rejected by good growers, bad wines, wines to burn”, wines fit only for the still. William Franck described a white “Verdot” with the same yellowish, brown-striped wood in 1845, and Cocks and Féret listed the Blanc Verdet among the white grapes of the Gironde from 1868 to 1922. By 1902, Cazeaux-Cazalet wrote, a few vines survived in the Sauternais as “a simple object of curiosity.”
Oldest record in my library: “blanc verdet ou verdelet ou corbin”, 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, tables of vine synonyms, 1783, as reported in Viala and Vermorel, Ampélographie, vol. 3, 1902; “Blanc berdet”, 1785, in Jean-Baptiste de Secondat, Mémoire sur la culture des vignes de la Guienne
The family
Parents unknown.
Verdet Blanc
The names
As the Gironde books wrote it: Blanc Verdet, Verdet, Gros Blanc Verdet, Petit Blanc Verdet, Verdot.
Other names in VIVC: Berdet, Gros Blanc Verdet, Melie Vert, Petit Blanc Verdet, Verdet, Verdet Chalosse.
Old names: Verdot (open)
In today’s rules
Not named in the rules of any Bordeaux appellation today.
In the books
“Bunches many and tight, always green at maturity.”
Grappes nombreu- ses et serrées, toujours vertes à la maturité.
“Sixth: the Blanc Verdet. This grape stands out by its large, thick, dark green leaf, and by its wood, tending to yellow and striped with brown”
6º Le Blanc Verdet . Ce cépage se distingue par sa feuille grande , épaisse et d'une couleur vert foncé ; par son bois tirant sur le jaune et rayé de brun
“[A vineyard of] 7 hectares, planted half in sémillon, 1/4 in sauvignon, 1/4 in muscade and verdet”
7 hect., complantés moitié en sémillon, 1/4 en sauvignon, 1/4 en muscade et verdet
“It was also found in the white vineyards of the Sauternais. At that time it was already judged severely: “rejected by good growers, bad wines, wines to burn””
On le trouvait aussi dans les vignobles blancs du Sauternais. A celte époque il était déjà sévèrement apprécié : « rebuté par les bons vignerons, vins mauvais, vins à brûler »
Sources
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, passport id 12961, accessed October 2026
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, passport id 12970, accessed October 2026 (Verdot Blanc, a different prime)
- M. du Puits de Maconex, Guide du propriétaire de vigne, Bordeaux, P. Chaumas, 1850 (bound with A. Joubert, Culture de la vigne dans le Médoc, in the library copy), 'Cépages blancs de la Gironde'
- Wilhelm (William) Franck, Traité sur les vins du Médoc, 2nd ed., 1845, ch. 3, vignes blanches
- Charles Cocks & Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 2nd ed., 1868, 'Cépages de vignes blanches', p. 27
- Charles Cocks (rev. Édouard Féret), Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 3rd ed., 1874, domaine de Bayle
- Pierre Viala & Victor Vermorel (eds.), Traité général de viticulture: Ampélographie, vol. 3, 1902, 'Blanc Verdet' by G. Cazeaux-Cazalet, citing Dupré de Saint-Maur, Tableaux de la synonymie de la vigne (1783)
- 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)
- Jean-Baptiste de Secondat, Mémoires sur l’histoire naturelle du chêne […], sur la culture de la vigne, et sur le vin de la Guienne, Paris, De Bure fils aîné, 1785
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, accessed October 2026
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