An international registry now lists old vines around the world

ver the past few years, the contribution of old vines* in terms of genetic diversity and biodiversity, resistance to changing climate conditions, sustainability and site-expressiveness has been increasingly acknowledged. But there were no resources to catalogue old vines and allow both consumers and industry members to easily identify them. Now, a new website – www.oldvineregistry.org – developed from records established by the team at jancisrobinson.com with funding from California’s Jackson Family Wines, has plugged that gap.

Ensuring economic viability

From a practical perspective, the website uses a search engine akin to Google, via a number of key words such as grape variety, the name of the owner and the location of the vineyard. “This is a crowd-sourced database, a grassroots effort. We encourage everyone to participate”, stressed American blogger and jancisrobinson.com contributor Alder Yarrow, who designed the website. Speaking at the official online launch on June 26, he added, “As an importer or distributor, for instance, you can contribute vineyards you own or know about”, explaining that the ultimate objective was to “become the most authoritative, complete resource out there”. But this is not the only goal – a link from the listed vineyards to WineSearcher aims to “close the commercial loop. It’s one thing to talk about old vines around the world and talk about their value, but if nobody’s actually buying, tasting and enjoying and helping us evangelise those vineyards, they will never be commercially viable and will be ripped out”.

How fashions can jeopardise old vines

The whole issue is to promote the value of wines made from old vines to prevent them from being grubbed-up. “Tangible success for the registry would mean to double prices of old vine wines – they are not publicly valued enough”, claimed Jancis Robinson MW, who recalled her own personal eureka moment when she became aware of the need to protect this viticultural heritage: “My seminal experience came when I made my first visit in 2008 to Mike Officer in Sonoma. It was soon after Sideways and the big Pinot noir revolution and there was massive pressure to pull out beautiful old-vine Zinfandel and plant spindly little fashionable Pinot noir, which weren’t necessarily going to do that well in that place. That spurred me on to take a special protective attitude towards old vines”, stressed the British wine critic.

*Old vines were categorised by American blogger Alder Yarrow as vines at least thirty-five years old, the average age when vines are often replaced worldwide.