Mérille

The oldest record in my library is Jean-Baptiste de Secondat’s memoir of 1785 on the vines of Guienne, which describes a “Petite mérille” and a “Grosse mérille” among the red grapes without saying where he saw them. In the Gironde itself the first record is a list of minor vines. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, named “La Grosse Mérille” in 1868 among vines found in the department in very small quantity, and in 1874 among those that “are disappearing little by little from our vineyards” («disparaissent peu à peu de nos vignobles»). In the Gironde the guide gave it one local name, picard, at Mérignac. Elsewhere it was known by Bordeaux’s name: Bordelois in the Tarn-et-Garonne and Plant-de-Bordeaux in the Midi, as the 1898 guide recorded, with Périgord or Saint-Rabier in the Dordogne.

The guide judged it plainly in 1898: “light wine, little colored, of inferior quality” («ViN léger, peu coloré, de qualité inférieure»), from a vine that wants fertile, cool soil and, though it usually bears one bunch per shoot, “is very abundant” («il est très abondant»). VIVC lists Mérille (7650) with Bordelais, Plant de Bordeaux, and Gironde among its names, and no parents. Robinson, Harding, and Vouillamoz’s Wine Grapes (2012) draws Prunelard as one parent; if that link holds, Mérille shares a parent with Malbec, which DNA markers show is a cross of Prunelard and Magdeleine Noire des Charentes.

Oldest record in my library: “Petite mérille” and “Grosse mérille”, 1785, in 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, 1785, which does not say where in Guienne they grew; in the Gironde, “La Grosse Mérille” in Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins, 2nd edition, 1868