Past their best

The weather has been so grey this autumn that we haven't really seen the vine leaves in their full colour in sunlight and now I'm afraid they are past their best. I blipped these vines a couple of years ago, also on a grey day but before they started to fall. The other day Another Languedoc year also blipped the same vines, wondering what they were. I've always thought they were the Carignan variety, which is very common here, but I now realise that Carignan doesn't turn quite such a deep red.

So last night I asked a vine-growing, wine-making friend whose family have had vineyards here for generations and he told me that they are Alicante Bouschet. This is a teinturier variety, in other words, it deepens the red colour of the wine when it is used with other varieties of grapes because the flesh of the grapes, as well as the skins and leaves, is red. It was created in 1866 by Henri Bouschet when he crossed Petit Bouschet (a variety that had been created by his father) with Grenache. It is grown in many wine-growing areas, especially in France, Portugal, California, Italy and in south-eastern Spain where it is called garnacha tintorera.