Pinotage (pinot noir x cinsaut cross)
Pinotage (cruce de pinot noir y cinsaut)
- Date
- 1925 · confidence high
- Place
- Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa
- Credited to
- Abraham Izak Perold
- People
- 👤 Abraham Izak Perold1880–1941
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Professor Abraham Perold crossed pinot noir with cinsaut (called 'Hermitage' in South Africa) and obtained a variety adapted to the heat of the Cape. Pinotage became South Africa's signature grape.
Perold made the cross in 1925 at Stellenbosch University; the seedlings were kept in a colleague's garden (Charles Theron) and the first commercial wine was made decades later.
What it led to
- red wines with a distinctively South African character
- a new commercially successful grape variety bred by crossing in the 20th century
- plantings in New Zealand, Brazil and California