Othello

Othello is a black-berried hybrid raised in Canada by Charles Arnold. J. Roy-Chevrier, writing in Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel’s Ampélographie (1901 to 1910), gave it as Clinton crossed with Black Hamburgh; VIVC records no pedigree. In the Gironde the earliest record in my library is the 1881 International Phylloxera Congress in Bordeaux, which saw it in M. Piola’s collection at Condat near Libourne, and Piola ranked it among the hybrids of best promise. In 1883 he expected it to become the grape of the palus. In 1886 Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, named it with Herbemont among the red direct producers, and in 1893 their guide recorded Noah and Othello as used to replace the enrageat.

Its turn came in the glass. Roy-Chevrier wrote that in the Southwest, and mainly in the siliceous soils of the Graves, Othello “became almost neutral and kept a vague hint of muscat that did not much displease the Bordeaux palate” («devenu presque neutre garda une vague pointe de muscat qui ne déplut pas trop au palais bordelais»), and that Gironde merchants used it in blends. One grower, Félix Astruc, even supposed it a hybrid of Cabernet-Sauvignon and Riparia, fit to make imitation Bordeaux. In 1922 the guide still listed othello, with malbec and cabernet, among the grapes of the ordinary red wines of Le Pout, near Créon.

Oldest record in my library: Compte rendu général du Congrès international phylloxérique de Bordeaux, 1881