A Medieval Grape Is Still Used to Make Wine
It’s been genetically unchanged for at least 900 years.
by Sarah Zhang
Jun 10, 2019
3 minutes
In a medieval cesspit in central France, archaeologists dug up a small, hard grape seed. They believed it to be 900 years old, based on the artifacts found nearby. When geneticists crushed up the grape seed, extracted its DNA, and compared it with modern grapes, they found a perfect genetic match in Savagnin Blanc—a grape still grown, still picked, and still made into wine in Europe today.
This grape, it turns out,
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