Grolleau Noir, sometimes known as Groslot is the everyday red grape variety of touraine. It produces extremely high yields of relatively thin, acid wine and it is to the benefit of wine drinkers that it is so systematically being replaced with Gamay and, more recently, Cabernet Franc. It was once much more important but total French plantings have been steady this century at around 2,200 ha/5,500 acres in 2011. The status of the variety is such that it is allowed into the rosé but not red versions of appellation contrôlée wines such as anjou, saumur, and Touraine. It has played a major part only in Rosé d’Anjou, in which it is commonly blended with Gamay, which ripens just before it. Plantings of the pink-skinned mutation Grolleau Gris, in much the same part of France, had fallen to 459 ha/1,138 acres by 2011.
