Muscatel

The early-ripening variety called "July" of the White Muscat grape

Muscatel is the collective term for muscat varieties of grapes and their varieties, crossings or new varieties with Muscatel involvement and unrelated grape varieties. There are varieties of muscatel with berries of various shades of white, yellow, gray, green, pink, red, brown, purple, blue and black. According to one of the numerous references in the literature, the variety is said to have been around as early as 3000 BC. By the Egyptians and in what is now Iran.

The earliest concrete mention of the name Muscat goes back to 1230 to 1240 in the Liber de proprietatibus rerum - an encyclopedia by the scholastic Bartholomaeus Anglicus . Muscat, on the other hand, comes from the Italian moscatello .

Some variants have worldwide distribution and importance.

White wine varieties:

Gelber Muskateller , French muscat blanc à petits grains
Red muscatel

Table grape varieties:

Muscat de Hamburg
Muscat d'Alexandrie (Muscat of Alexandria)

The muscatel is one of the oldest white wine varieties , of which there are a large number of variations. Over two hundred members of the Muscat family can currently be identified. Probably the origin of the grape variety is in Asia Minor. Phoenician and Greek colonists spread the muscatel in the eastern Mediterranean. Later the Romans valued the Greek passum as a particularly fine wine . Muscat wine reached Central and Northern Europe through the intensification of long-distance trade in the 12th century. Venice played a special mediator role between the Orient and the Occident and controlled several islands in the eastern Mediterranean on which muscatel wine was grown. Muscat is also often referred to in the sources as "Greek wine" or "Cyprus wine". Not only through long-distance trade, but also through pilgrimages and crusades , southern wines spread as a commodity in Europe. Emperor Barbarossa valued this wine, which is also mentioned in the Nibelungenlied . The light white wine is characterized by its fine fruity acidity and its typically intense but not intrusive nutmeg bouquet .

Web links

Commons : Muskateller - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: Muskateller - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

Horst Dippel (founder): The wine dictionary (= Fischer. 15867). Continued by Cornelius Lange and Fabian Lange . Completely revised and supplemented new edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-15867-2 .
Dagmar Ehrlich : ABC of grape varieties. Vines and their wines. Hallwag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7742-6960-2 .
Pierre Galet : Dictionnaire encyclopédique des cépages. Hachette, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-01-236331-8 .
Walter Hillebrand, Heinz Lott, Franz Pfaff: Paperback of the grape varieties. 13th, revised edition. Fachverlag Fraund, Mainz 2003, ISBN 3-921156-53-X .

Individual evidence

^ Jancis Robinson , Julia Harding, José Vouillamoz : Wine Grapes. A complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, including their Origins and Flavors. Ecco, New York NY 2012, ISBN 978-0-06-220636-7 .
↑ Kurt M. Hoffmann: Traminer and Muskateller and their wines. The life stories of the classic bouquet varieties (= writings on wine history. No. 61, ISSN 0302-0967 ). Society for the History of Wine eV, Wiesbaden 1982, p. 19.
↑ Jancis Robinson: Grape varieties and their wines. Hallwag, Bern et al. 1997, ISBN 3-444-10497-9 , pp. 125-131.

[Wine_Grapes-1] Jancis Robinson , Julia Harding, José Vouillamoz : Wine Grapes. A complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, including their Origins and Flavors. Ecco, New York NY 2012, ISBN 978-0-06-220636-7 .

[2] Kurt M. Hoffmann: Traminer and Muskateller and their wines. The life stories of the classic bouquet varieties (= writings on wine history. No. 61, ISSN 0302-0967 ). Society for the History of Wine eV, Wiesbaden 1982, p. 19.

[3] Jancis Robinson: Grape varieties and their wines. Hallwag, Bern et al. 1997, ISBN 3-444-10497-9 , pp. 125-131.