White grape
Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. “ew” is “ee” said with rounded lips. “ahn” and “an” are nasal vowels: say them through the nose, with no n. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.
Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains, the Muscat of Frontignan, was a Gironde wine grape in 1816 and, by 1893, a profitable table grape that Cocks and Féret named “Muscat blanc, appelé aussi Frontignan.”
Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains is the small-berried white Muscat of Frontignan. The Gironde books call it “muscat blanc”, and in 1893 the guide of Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, added “appelé aussi Frontignan”, the name that points to this grape; without a description, the identity is likely. André Jullien, the Paris wine merchant whose Topographie de tous les vignobles connus first appeared in 1816, put the muscat blanc first among the white grapes most grown in the Gironde, and wrote that the muscat gave wines of the same quality as those of the south of France.
In Bordeaux it was mostly a fruit for the table. M. du Puits de Maconex, a grower at Gradignan, in his Guide du propriétaire de vigne (1850), described the Muscat blanc among table grapes: vigorous and generous against walls, but very prone to coulure in the open, “even more in the Gironde than in the Rhône valley.” In 1893 the guide said that the Muscat blanc and its pink variety were much grown in the Gironde as table grapes, from which some owners drew a great profit. It is the last mention of it in the books before 1950.
Oldest record in my library: “muscat blanc”, 1736, in abbé Bellet’s catalog of the vines of Bordeaux and Cadillac, as printed in Viala and Vermorel, Ampélographie, vol. 1, 1910; “Le muscat blanc est le plus commun”, 1785, in Jean-Baptiste de Secondat, Mémoire sur la culture des vignes de la Guienne; André Jullien, Topographie de tous les vignobles connus, 1816
The family
Parents unknown.
Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains
The names
As the Gironde books wrote it: muscat blanc, Frontignan, muscat rose.
In today’s rules
Not named in the rules of any Bordeaux appellation today.
In the books
“Among the white varieties, the muscat yields wines of the same quality as those of the south of France”
Parmi les variétés blanches, le muscat fournit des vins de même qualité que ceux du midi de la France
“Muscat blanc. A vigorous grape, a large yield against walls; very prone to coulure in the open, even more in the Gironde than in the Rhône valley.”
Muscat blanc. * . cépage vigoureux , produit considé- rable contre les murs ; très sujet à couler en plein air , plus encore dans la Gironde que dans la vallée du Rhône.
“Muscat blanc, also called Frontignan.”
Muscat blanc , appelé aussi Frontignan .
“Much grown as table grapes in the Gironde are the Chasselas, the Malvoisie, the Muscat blanc, and its pink variety”
On cultive beaucoup comme raisins de table dans la Gironde le Chasselas , la Malvoisie , le Muscat blanc et sa variété rose
Sources
- André Jullien, Topographie de tous les vignobles connus, 1st ed., 1816, Gironde
- 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), 'Vignes cultivées pour raisins de table', p. 82
- Charles Cocks & Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 6th ed., 1893, 'Cépages de vignes blanches', pp. 25 and 27
- 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
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