Croatia the home of Zinfandel!

A virtually unpronounceable grape variety has answered the question about whether Zinfandel and Primativo are one and the same. The Croatian crljenak kastelanski has been found to be genetically identical to both California’s Zinfandel and Italy’s Primativo. Joel Peterson from Ravenswood Wines, the biggest producer of Zinfandel in the US, told the UK Wine Show that it was UC Davis’ Dr Carole Meredith who figured out how to analyse grapes to determine where they came from. She used this data to look at Zinfandel. He said that they believe the Croatian grape went across the Adriatic to Italy in around the early 18th century and to California in 1854 via a collection in Austria. This isn’t surprising since Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. According to Joel, the Croatian grape, ‘looks slightly different than Primativo in that it’s got much more uneven ripening, which is very much like Zinfandel.’ But he explained, ‘It makes sense based on everything we can determine genetically that California’s version is probably from Croatia, as is Italy’s. They’ve been separated a long time and been selected for different things, so they look different. But basically they are clonal variations of the same grape.’