Teinturier

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

teinturier, literally means ‘dyer’ in French, which is the function for which these vines with their red-fleshed grapes were initially grown, notably in the Midi, to add at least apparent depth to the pale wines of the dominant aramon in the early years of the 20th century.

The original variety called Teinturier, or sometimes Teinturier du Cher, was probably extremely ancient, and was first noted around Orléans in the 17th and 18th centuries, where it imbued the pale pink wines of the region with valuable colour. dna profiling strongly suggests a parent-offspring relationship with savagnin.