🍇 Rubired

Rubired is a dark-berried Californian teinturier grape: not only its skin but also its flesh and juice are red. Harold Olmo bred it at the California Agricultural Experiment Station by crossing Alicante Ganzin with Tinta Cão in 1938; the pedigree is confirmed by DNA markers. The variety was intended to give colour to wine, juice and concentrate.

According to the 1962 bulletin by Olmo and Albert Koyama, seedling H 4-26 was tested under the number S 8; it first fruited in 1942, and the first wine samples were made in 1947. On the Davis trial plot Rubired gave 7.6 tons per acre in its first bearing year and 12.1 tons per acre in 1954; over the first five crops it and Royalty were the highest-yielding of the six varieties tested. The ten largest berries of a bunch weigh 12 g on average (Carignan: 22 g), with firm, juicy, deep red flesh; once in bearing, the vine is fairly tolerant of powdery mildew, red spider and leafhoppers. The authors recommended it for blends and port-style wines and for red concentrate, but found it too tannic and bitter for unblended dry table wine. FPS dates the release to 1958 and classes it as a hybrid with 87.5% Vitis vinifera; its uses are juice and wine. VIVC records 2773 ha in the USA (1992) and 33 ha in Australia (1991), and the California Grape Acreage Report for 2023 gives 9568 acres, about 3870 ha; there the variety is also listed as Tintoria. Among its offspring VIVC names the variety Scout.

Why it matters to you. If you see Rubired on the label of a Californian red blend, a juice or a port-style wine, it is there above all for colour: its juice is red in itself. That is why it still covers thousands of acres in California, although the authors of the bulletin did not recommend making dry wine from it without blending.