Noah is an American white grape variety. It's a hybrid of the native American species vines Vitis riparia and V. labrusca (the native European grape is V. vinifera). Noah was created in 1896 and was cultivated in France for decades. You can find it naturalised on the edges of vineyards, occasionally still cultivated in certain parcels of vines, and growing in private domestic gardens. It is one of the notorious banned grape varieties in France though.
Growing on a truffle orchard fence.
It can be identified through a combination of characteristics. The young growing tips are cottony white with pink leaf buds. The young leaves are downy and yellowish. The cottony adult leaves are three lobed, with shallow sinuses (gaps between the lobes) and small angular leaves. The petiole (leaf stem) joins at the bottom of a wide V shaped sinus.
It is a late maturing grape, being two and a half weeks after Chasselas (see my post on this popular table and hobby wine maker's grape). Noah is a vigorous, hardy and fertile variety even when pruned hard. It is resistant to mildew, blight and black rot, but not sufficiently to phylloxera or chlorosis (iron deficiency in plants growing in calcareous soil).
Sampling Noah.
The bunches and berries are medium sized. Bunches are cylindrical-conical; berries are round, greenish-white, with a soft, highly viscous pulp. Noah is one of the varieties that produces sweet wines described as 'foxy', considered highly and undesirably distinctive. The term 'foxy' is intended as an insult, to convey the idea that the wine tastes like fox urine. It's a taste you can find in blackcurrants too, but although they have a very distinctive taste too, no one uses perjorative terms to describe it. If it is distilled into eau de vie it has pleasantly raspberry and rose aromas.
As a table grape Noah polarises opinion. You either love it or hate it. Those who love it can detect ripe wild strawberry aromas along with litchi and raspberry. Those who hate it say the grapes taste like mulberries or strawberries that have been ruined by stink bugs. The grapes are very sweet, but with a lot of acidity to balance that. The flesh slips out of the skin easily so you can squirt the pulp into your mouth through the stem end just by squeezing each grape. Grapes that do this are known as 'slip skins'. The grapes don't keep or travel well, so they are no good as a commercial table grape.
Although banned since 1935, the idea that Noah will make you mad or blind is still widely believed in rural areas, especially winemaking regions. These banned grape varieties (there are several of them) were all developed for hilly terrain. Noah is also nicknamed the 'vin de trois' because it was claimed that two people were needed to support the drinker.
What a bunch of scrumpers!
The explanation for the mythology surrounding Noah and the other banned grape varieties seems to be that the methanol content of wine from these grape varieties is higher than that of Vitis vinifera. Studies confirm this higher level, although it is not "substantially higher" than in other wines. In addition to the grape variety used, the winemaking process also has a major influence on methanol levels. In any case, methanol can only be produced by fermentation of the grape juice, so it's safe to eat the grapes or drink the juice.
In addition to public health reasons, the political and economic context of the early 20th century, notably overproduction, may have contributed to the questioning of the cultivation of these grape varieties. Noah was used as a progenitor by 19th-century hybridizers such as François Baco, Bertille Seyve, Pierre Castel, Fernand Gaillard and Albert Seibel. The best-known variety is baco blanc, the only hybrid legally allowed, and used in Armagnac.
In Europe, the variety has practically disappeared. However, it is still occasionally found in private vineyards, established on trellises. While vines based on American hybrids covered 20 500 ha in France in 1958, only 1500 ha remain today, mainly located in Charente, Ardèche, Cévennes and Vendée.
When the Nazis occupied Alsace they insisted on all the banned varieties being grubbed up, on pain of severe prosecution.
The French decree banning these grape varieties was repealed in 2003, to be replaced by a European wide ban, which includes not being able to commercially grow these grape varieties, or any varieties which include them in their parentage. The other five banned varieties are Othello, Isabelle, Jacquez, Clinton and Herbemont.
The photos are all of a Noah vine that came to my attention recently on a walk with friends. It is growing on the fence around a truffle orchard and I assumed it was a popular variety called Chasselas, but Monique quickly corrected me once she had tasted one. She said it was a blast from the past, a taste from her childhood and was the variety Noah, unmistakable once you know it. I have since discovered that another friend has an enormous one in her yard, which has grown many metres up a conifer. I'm pleased to have finally encountered one of these banned grape varieties in the flesh because I've been wanting to write about them for ages.
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