Red grape
Magdeleine Noire des Charentes
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.
Magdeleine Noire des Charentes is a black French grape, no longer cultivated, that DNA markers show to be a parent of both Merlot and Malbec (Cot).
Magdeleine Noire des Charentes is a black grape from France (VIVC, the international variety catalog, passport 22717). It is no longer cultivated, as Camille Jollard noted in a 2017 thesis: it survives in the grapevine genetic resources center at Vassal-Montpellier, at the Conservatoire du Vignoble Charentais near Cognac, and as 4 vines at the INRA research center in Bordeaux. DNA markers show that it is a parent of Merlot, with Cabernet Franc, and of Malbec (Cot), with Prunelard, as Jean-Michel Boursiquot and colleagues reported in 2009; that study read it as Merlot’s likely mother, from chloroplast markers. Wine Grapes (2012) also draws it as a parent of Abouriou, a link still proposed.
The trail began with a single vine. As José Vouillamoz, co-author of Wine Grapes, told it in a 2023 lecture, a relic vine with a unique DNA profile was found at Saint-Suliac in 1996. Between 2004 and 2007, vines the Charentes called “Raisin de la Madeleine” turned out to share that profile. VIVC lists “Vigne Suliacaise” among its other names. In 2013, Thierry Lacombe and colleagues named it, with Gouais Blanc, as a key parent made scarce by genetic erosion.
Oldest record in my library: Gustavo César Sant’ana, thesis on the genetic and health testing of grapevine nursery stock, 2010 (in the pedigree of Merlot); the vine itself was found at Saint-Suliac in 1996, as José Vouillamoz reported in a Wine Grapes lecture for the Wine Scholar Guild, 2023
The family
Parents unknown.
Magdeleine Noire des Charentes
- Boursiquot et al. 2009, AJGWR 15:144-155; VIVC 7657
- Boursiquot et al. 2009, AJGWR 15:144-155; VIVC 2889
- Robinson, Harding & Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes (2012), pedigree diagram; no pedigree on VIVC 34; inverse possible
The discovery: In 2009, Boursiquot and colleagues showed with DNA markers that it is a parent of Merlot and of Malbec (Cot).
The names
Other names in VIVC: Vigne Suliacaise.
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 22717, accessed October 2026
- 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 read through the OpenAlex record (as recorded in the Merlot pack: putative mother deduced from chloroplast microsatellites)
- Lacombe, T. et al. (2013), 'Large-scale parentage analysis in an extended set of grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.)', Theoretical and Applied Genetics 126 (2):401-414
- Camille Jollard, La Flavescence Dorée de la vigne (PhD thesis), 2017, https://theses.hal.science/tel-01718515v1
- José Vouillamoz, 'The Powerful Potentates of the Grape World: Noiriens and Carmenets' (Wine Scholar Guild lecture slides), September 17, 2023
- Robinson, Harding & Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes (2012), pedigree diagrams
- Gustavo César Sant'ana, 'Técnicas sorológicas e moleculares na avaliação genética e fitossanitária de mudas e matrizes de videira', thesis, 2010
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, accessed October 2026
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