Red grape
Teinturier
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. “ew” is “ee” said with rounded lips. “an” is a nasal vowel: say it through the nose, with no n. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.
Teinturier is the red-fleshed black grape the old Gironde books kept only for color; DNA markers show Savagnin as one parent, and it is a parent of Petit Bouschet.
The oldest witness is the abbé Bellet, canon of Cadillac, whose manuscript of a journey through Guyenne in 1736 Auguste Petit-Lafitte used for La vigne dans le Bordelais (1868). Bellet called the Teinturier also Mousat: “It is very bad, he says, but it blackens well, it ripens too late and sours the wine” («Il est fort mauvais , dit - il , mais il noircit bien , il mûrit trop tard et aigrit le vin .»). Petit-Lafitte found it odd that Secondat left it out, “for this vine must be old” in the Bordelais («car ce cépage doit être ancien»).
The later books agree on its one gift. William Franck, the Bordeaux wine merchant whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, wrote that it “is fit only to give color to low-grade wines that lack it, and even then it must be used sparingly” («Il n'est propre qu'à donner de la couleur aux vins de basse qualité qui en manquent, encore faut-il en user modérément»). Armand d’Armailhacq, a Médoc proprietor, in his 1855 book on the vines and wines of the Médoc, found it only in the lesser vineyards of the Bas-Médoc. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, gave its Gironde names in 1874 as alicante or noireau.
DNA markers place the Teinturier (VIVC 12304, also called Teinturier du Cher) among the offspring of Savagnin, with the second parent unknown (Lacombe et al., 2013). VIVC’s marker pedigree also makes it a parent of Petit Bouschet, crossed with Aramon by Louis Bouschet in 1829, and Petit Bouschet is a parent of Alicante Henri Bouschet. In the Gironde the word needs care: “teinturier” and “teinturin” were also names of the Malbec there.
Oldest record in my library: The abbé Bellet, manuscript of a journey through Guyenne in 1736, as reported by Auguste Petit-Lafitte, La vigne dans le Bordelais, 1868
The family
- Lacombe et al. 2013; VIVC 12304
- VIVC 1619 marker pedigree (breeder record agrees)
The discovery: In 2013, Lacombe and colleagues, in Theoretical and Applied Genetics, placed the Teinturier among the offspring of Savagnin by DNA markers.
The names
As the Gironde books wrote it: l'Alicante, Alicante ou noireau, Noireau, Mousat.
Other names in VIVC: Bourguignon Noir, Gros Noir, Moreau, Noir D'Espagne, Noir D'Orleans, Noiraut, Pineau Teinturier, Plant Qui Tache, Pontac, Pontak, Tachat, Teint, Teinturier Du Cher, Teinturier Du Jura.
In today’s rules
Not named in the rules of any Bordeaux appellation today.
In the books
“It is fit only to give color to low-grade wines that lack it, and even then it must be used sparingly.”
Il n'est propre qu'à donner de la couleur aux vins de basse qualité qui en manquent, encore faut-il en user modérément
“The teinturier, grown in some regions for the dark color of its juice, is not grown at all in the good vineyards of the Médoc.”
Le teinturier, qui est cultivé dans certaines contrées, à cause de la couleur foncée de son jus, ne l'est pas du tout dans les bons vignobles du Médoc.
“It is very bad, he says, but it blackens well, it ripens too late and sours the wine.”
Il est fort mauvais , dit - il , mais il noircit bien , il mûrit trop tard et aigrit le vin .
“Wine lacking sap, strength, and finesse, with only its color in its favor, a quality it has to the highest degree.”
VIN manquant de sève, de force et de finesse, n'ayant pour lui que la couleur, qualité qu'il possède au plus haut degré
Sources
- Auguste Petit-Lafitte, La vigne dans le Bordelais, 1868, on the abbé Bellet's manuscript of a 1736 journey and D. Le Teinturier, pp. 484 to 485
- William Franck, Traité sur les vins du Médoc, 1st ed., 1824, ch. 2
- Armand d'Armailhacq, La culture des vignes, la vinification et les vins dans le Médoc, 1855, ch. 2
- Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 3rd ed., 1874, p. 21
- Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 7th ed., 1898, ampélographie, Teinturier and Malbec names
- Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 6th ed., 1893, 'teinturin (malbec)'
- T. Lacombe et al., Large-scale parentage analysis in an extended set of grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.), Theoretical and Applied Genetics 126 (2):401-414, 2013, doi:10.1007/s00122-012-1988-2
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, passport id 12304 (TEINTURIER) and its bibliography to pedigree confirmed by markers, accessed October 2026
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, passport id 1619 (PETIT BOUSCHET: Teinturier x Aramon, breeder Louis Bouschet, crossed 1829), accessed October 2026
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, accessed October 2026
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