🍇 Regner

Regner is a white wine grape variety from Germany, belonging to the European species Vitis vinifera. Georg Scheu crossed it in 1929 at the State Institute for Grapevine Breeding in Alzey; its breeding number is Alzey 10378 (AZ 10378). According to VIVC, the variety was granted protection on 10 February 1978.

Scheu named the Italian table grape Luglienca Bianca and Gamay Früh as the parents, but the DNA marker analysis cited in VIVC did not confirm this: the true parents are Muscat d'Eisenstadt (listed in VIVC under the prime name Ingram's Muscat) and Müller-Thurgau. Muscat Ottonel therefore does not appear in Regner's pedigree. The VIVC area table traces the variety's fortunes in Germany: in 1977 it covered 36 ha, in the early 1990s up to 178 ha (1992), and by 2004 74 ha remained. The variety is still on the Bavarian list of wine grape varieties permitted in the vineyard restructuring programme (as of May 2025), where it is marked as white. Regner is held by 11 collections in Austria, Brazil, Canada, Czechia, Germany, France, Hungary and South Africa.

Why it matters to you. Regner is a clear example of how DNA analysis rewrites pedigrees: instead of the table grape Luglienca and Gamay, a Muscat and Müller-Thurgau turned out to be among its ancestors. This explains why different reference books give different parents for the variety, and shows which data deserve trust. And the shrinking area since the 1990s means that Regner wine remains a niche product found mainly in Germany.