🍇 Galante

Galante is a German table grape with black berries and an interspecific hybrid. Norbert Becker crossed it at the State Viticulture Institute in Freiburg in 1991 from Solaris and Muscat Bleu. The official name of the variety is Galante; many descriptions still call it Galanth, and during breeding it carried the number FR 550-91 r.

According to VIVC, the pedigree Solaris × Muscat Bleu is given according to the breeder, without verification by genetic markers. The berries contain fully formed seeds, the catalogue lists 3 synonyms, and only 1 collection keeps a sample of the variety. VIVC knows 5 varieties from the same cross: besides Galante, they are Garantos, Osella, Rosina and Clara.

Galante received plant variety protection in Germany on 20 February 2017. The official bulletin of the Federal Plant Variety Office (Bundessortenamt), Blatt für Sortenwesen, for March 2017 lists it under number RBE 753 in the section Zierrebe, that is, ornamental vine Vitis vinifera. On the same day other Freiburg varieties in this section were also granted protection: Garantos, Osella and Calastra.

Why it matters to you. If a nursery catalogue mentions Galanth, Galante or FR 550-91 r, it is the same variety. And the fact that VIVC classes it as a table grape while the Bundessortenamt protected it as an ornamental vine explains why Galante is described as a grape for the table and the garden, not as a wine grape.