Savagnin

Savagnin or Savagnin blanc is a variety of white wine grape with green-skinned berries. It is mostly grown in the Jura region of France, where it is made into Savagnin wine or the famous vin jaune and vin de paille. The history of Savagnin is complicated and not helped by its rather unstable genome. The story starts with the ancient Traminer variety, a green-skinned grape recorded in the Tyrolean village of Tramin from ca. 1000 until the 16th century. . The famous ampelographer Pierre Galet thought that Traminer was identical to the green-skinned Savagnin blanc in the Jura. More recently it has been suggested that Savagnin blanc acquired slight differences in its leaf shape and geraniol content as it travelled to the other end of the Alps. Frankisch in Austria, Heida and Païen in Switzerland, Furmint in Hungary and tramín bílý (brynšt) from Bohemia are all very similar to Savagnin blanc and probably represent clones of the Traminer family, if not Traminer itself. The Viognier of the Rhone Valley may be a more distant relative of Savagnin blanc.

Source: Wikipedia