Red grape
Tannat
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. The recording is the reference.
Tannat is a black French grape and, DNA markers show, a parent of Arinarnoa with Cabernet Sauvignon, a cross made in Bordeaux and admitted into AOC Bordeaux in 2021.
Tannat is a black grape from France (VIVC passport 12257), with no parents on record. Its home is the far southwest: reporting in 1846 on Count Odart’s Ampélographie, M. Chevreul named “the tanat, dominant vine in the most renowned vineyard of the Hautes-Pyrénées” («le tanat, cépage dominant dans le vignoble le plus renommé des Hautes-Pyrénées»). VIVC lists “Madiran” among its other names, with names that echo Bordeaux, such as “Bordelais Noir” and “Bordelez Beltza”. Tannat has also grown in the Gironde since 2009, as one of the 52 varieties of the VitAdapt experimental vineyard at Villenave-d’Ornon.
Its tie to Bordeaux runs through a cross made in the city. Pierre Marcel Durquety crossed Arinarnoa in 1956 at the INRA viticulture research station in Bordeaux, and the breeder’s record gave Merlot × Petit Verdot. DNA markers later showed Arinarnoa to be Tannat × Cabernet Sauvignon, as the French catalog of varieties and clones (2007) and Thierry Lacombe and colleagues (2013) report. On March 22, 2021, Arinarnoa was admitted into AOC Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur as a variety of interest for adaptation; a 2023 count by the Gironde Chamber of Agriculture found about 20 ha.
Oldest record in my library: “Le tannat”, 1828, in B. A. Lenoir, Traité de la culture de la vigne (Jurançon and Gan); “le tanat”, 1846, in M. Chevreul, report on Count Odart’s Ampélographie (Hautes-Pyrénées)
The family
- ENTAV-ITV catalog 2007; Lacombe et al. 2013; VIVC 599
The discovery: In 2013, DNA markers confirmed Arinarnoa as Tannat × Cabernet Sauvignon, against its recorded Merlot × Petit Verdot.
The names
Other names in VIVC: Bordelais Noir, Bordelez Beltza, Bordeleza Belcha, Harriague, Madiran, Moustron, Moustroun, Tanat, Tannat Gris, Tannat Noir Femelle, Tannat Noir Male.
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 12257, accessed October 2026
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, passport id 599, accessed October 2026 (Arinarnoa: Tannat x Cabernet Sauvignon by markers; breeder record Merlot Rouge x Petit Verdot; breeder Durquety, INRA Bordeaux, crossed 1956)
- Anonymous (ENTAV-ITV), Catalogue des variétés et clones de vigne cultivés en France, 2nd ed., 2007
- 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
- Rapport de M. Chevreul sur l'ouvrage intitulé Ampélographie... par le comte Odart, 1846, https://archive.org/details/bnf-bpt6k6545096z
- van Leeuwen, C. et al. (2019), 'An Update on the Impact of Climate Change in Viticulture and Potential Adaptations', Agronomy 9:514, Figure 6, list of the 52 VitAdapt varieties
- Arrêtés of March 22, 2021 homologating the cahiers des charges of AOC Bordeaux and Bordeaux supérieur (JORF March 30, 2021), as recorded in the Castets, Arinarnoa and Marselan packs
- Chambre d'agriculture de la Gironde, PNDV Tour 2023, 'Évolution et pilotage de l'encépagement' (Charlier, Vecchiato), slide 28, as recorded in the Castets and Arinarnoa packs
- B. A. Lenoir, Traité de la culture de la vigne et de la vinification, 1828
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, accessed October 2026
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