White grape
Mondeuse Blanche
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. “eu” is “ay” said with rounded lips. “ahn” and “ohn” are nasal vowels: say them through the nose, with no n. The recording is the reference.
Mondeuse Blanche is a white grape of Savoie that DNA markers show is a parent of Syrah, with Dureza; it enters the Bordeaux tree through Syrah, a vine the Médoc once planted.
Mondeuse Blanche is a white grape of Savoie, in the French Alps, where the Syrah pedigree in Wine Grapes (Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding, and José Vouillamoz, 2012) places its origin. DNA markers show that Syrah is a cross of Mondeuse Blanche and Dureza, a black grape of the Rhône. Bowers, Siret, Meredith, This, and Boursiquot published the pedigree in Acta Horticulturae in 2000, Lacombe and colleagues found it again in 2013, and the Vitis International Variety Catalogue (VIVC) lists it as confirmed by markers. The same book records parent-offspring links, found in 2008, between Mondeuse Blanche and both Mondeuse Noire and Viognier.
Syrah is its way into the Bordeaux family tree. Auguste Petit-Lafitte, the Gironde’s professor of agriculture, wrote in La vigne dans le Bordelais (1868) of “the Sirrha, or Hermitage vine, introduced into the Médoc by M. Destournel and now spread through several vineyards of the same district” (« le Sirrha , ou plant de l'Hermitage , introduit en Médoc par M. Destournel et aujourd'hui répandu dans plusieurs vignobles de la même localité »). The Gironde books do not mention Mondeuse Blanche itself. Its place on the tree is as a parent of a grape the Médoc once planted.
The family
- Bowers et al. 2000, Acta Hort. 528:129-132; Lacombe et al. 2013; VIVC 11748
The discovery: In 2000, Bowers, Siret, Meredith, This, and Boursiquot published Mondeuse Blanche and Dureza as the parents of Syrah (Acta Horticulturae 528); Wine Grapes dates the finding to 1998.
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, prime-name search 'MONDEUSE BLANCHE' (id 7919) and passport id 11748 (Syrah), accessed October 2026
- Bowers, J. E., Siret, R., Meredith, C. P., This, P. & Boursiquot, J.-M. (2000), 'A single pair of parents proposed for a group of grapevine varieties in northeastern France', Acta Horticulturae 528:129-132
- 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
- Robinson, Harding & Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes (2012), Syrah and Mondeuse pedigree diagrams and captions
- Auguste Petit-Lafitte, La vigne dans le Bordelais, 1868; his title 'professeur d'agriculture du département de la Gironde' from Édouard Féret, Almanach du buveur, 1870
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, accessed October 2026
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