Lucie Morton and DuCard Vineyards are one heck of a combo. An event with either would interest me. Combining them is enough to make me giddy.

This past weekend Lucie gave a presentation that ranged from how she got into ampelography, her research proving Norton and Cynthiana are different grapes, to her upcoming documentary Immigrant Grapes: The Odyssey of Forbidden Wines which documents the diaspora of American hybrid grapes, and Cunningham in particular, in the late 19th century.

If that’s not enough, I was able to get a sample of DuCard’s 2023 Norton and his sparkling Norton/Vio blend, Dorothy’s Slippers (although my favorite of the day was the excellent 2023 Triskele red blend).

I don’t recall this event being named, but I’d like to think of it as “hybrid-palooza”. And BTW -this was the latest in long list of great events hosted by DuCard.

For wine lovers who’ve never been – you’re missing out on a place that’s one of my Top-10 wineries in the state. Not only do I love the wine, DuCard has hosted everything from guest speakers like Lucie, “Dark Sky” astronomy viewings, and chocolate pairings with a Master Chocolatier who works with Lindt.

But I digress. Let’s talk about Lucie.

Lucie gave an informal lecture to a packed room, starting with a recap of her career as an ampelographer; a specialist who studies and identifies grapevines. So rare is this field only a few people are recognized as practicing it, and Lucie is perhaps the most famous ampelographer in the world.

Her accomplishments are too numerous to mention them all, so I’ll just list some highlights:

• It was Lucie who first translated Précis d’Ampélographie Pratique (A Practical Ampelography: Grapevine Identification), a seminal work on the subject

• She helped prove California nurseries were inadvertently selling plant material that was already infected with undiscovered diseases, thus saving vineyards down the line from planting diseased vines

• Lucie also helped popularize the practice of planting vineyard rows tightly together. She understood early on that such dense plantings reduced the water available to the vines, forcing them to struggle. Since struggling vines produce better fruit, that resulted in better wine.

But you know what accomplishment she’s most thrilled to discuss? That she got to name one of the diseases she discovered. 

And best of all, she named it “Black Goo”.

So yeah – she’s pretty much the most down-to-earth person you could meet.

After her introduction, we did a deep dive on one of her favorite subjects – hybrid grapes. 

Norton and Cynthiana – Not the Same Grape!

She set the tone with one of my favorite quotes of the day: “Immigrant grapes were discriminated against, as all immigrants are”.

Hybrid grapes are almost by definition immigrants, as they have both American and European DNA. This combo makes themvery weather and disease resistant, traits that winemakers love.

Unfortunately, wine snobs have traditionally looked down on such grapes, making them less commercially appealing. This is despite her insistence that “young consumers don’t want snobby vinifera”.

Lucie doesn’t have any tolerance for wine snobbery. She quoted one winemaker who said “There are no bad grape varieties. Only bad winemakers,” which summarizes her views on the subject.

Norton is one such ‘immigrant grape,’ although to this day its exact DNA ancestry isn’t clear. But it’s not just the ancestry of Norton that’s confusing, its identifying what grapes are *actually* Norton.

Norton often referred to by another name – Cynthiana. Many places use the names Cynthiana and Norton interchangeably.

But some years ago, Lucie realized something – Norton and Cynthiana are in fact two different grapes that were mistakenly mixed together. And she’s been fighting to get this fact recognized for years.

From what I’ve gathered so far, Norton juice is somewhat darker and more rustic, while Cynthiana is a little more graceful. Unfortunately, plantings of the two are now so mixed together around the state it’s almost impossible to separate them.

Lucie is so good at her job she can tell the two apart just by examining their leaves:

• Norton: According to her, Norton leaves are ‘shaped like a bat’. It also has a rougher underside

• Cynthiana: Has a smoother underside, and no ‘bat wings’

• While I originally thought these two varieties might be cousins, apparently, they are more distantly related than I originally thought. Maybe not cousins at all, in fact.

She even did a little show-and-tell. Not sure if you can tell in the photos, but the leaf on the left is Norton, while the right one is Cynthiana.

Immigrant Grapes: The Odyssey of Forbidden Wines

Our chat about Norton was a natural segue about hybrid grapes in general, including an upcoming documentary called The Odyssey of Forbidden Wines.

The documentary is spiritual successor of another film she participated in; Vitis Prohibita. But whereas the former was specifically about French American hybrid grapes that are ‘forbidden’ in France, Odyssey is specifically about the Cunningham grape, and broadly about the journey of largely forgotten American grapes that found their way overseas.

It turns out that Cunningham is something of a ‘spirit grape’ for Lucie in particular. You might say it’s part of her family history.

Her ancestors are Huguenots (French Protestants) who she can trace back to the 16th century, from the Champagne region of France.

Religious oppression forced them to flee their homeland. And their means of escape?

To hide in wine barrels during their crossing from France into Holland. Because of course that’s how a relative of Lucie Morton would escape to freedom.

She has another connection to this grape. Lucie believes these same ancestors took with them seeds of a French cultivar named Meslier Petit, which today is a minor white grape still used in Champagne.

Those ancestors eventually immigrated to Virginia, where she believes they planted Meslier Petit. Those French vines in turn pollinated an unknown American grape, leading to the creation of a red grape known as Bland.

Bland in turn is the parent for the source of Lucie’s current fascination: Cunningham. This grape originated in 1812 in Prince Edward County (also home to Lucie’s family farm) and was a popular varietal in 19th century American winemaking.

This timing is important. The worldwide spread of phylloxera devastated European vineyards, forcing winemakers to rely upon American grapes (including Cunningham) for several decades before the widespread use of grafting. Once grafting took off, those grapes dropped in popularity.

Dropped – but didn’t disappear. While France eventually banned the planting of American hybrids, some rural farmers hid their hybrid grapes and continued to make them in secret (I can’t recommend Vitis Prohibita enough to learn more).

It’s fortunate these farmers secretly kept their vines, because Cunningham disappeared when Prohibition forced US farmers to tear out their vineyards.

That backstory led to Lucie’s most recent mission – to bring back Cunningham to the USA. 

I won’t narrate the entire film, but the short version is not only did she find Cunningham in France, but she also found it on the Portuguese island of Madeira. 

It turns out that Cunningham’s leaves are so distinctive she recognized them immediately shortly after arriving on the island. Lucie even knocked on a stranger’s door to ask if she could inspect a vine she saw in his yard (she has a running joke she can recognize grapes from the passenger side of a car going 30 miles an hour).

You’d think Madeira is an odd choice for Cunningham, but there is a logic to local farmers continuing to use it even after other options became available. Cunningham is a high-sugar grape, which Lucie noted makes it especially useful in making fortified wine (Isabella is another grape she discovered on the island). 

Suffice to say Cunningham’s journey back to the US has been arduous – but ultimately successful. Lucie finally got her vines and planted them at her family farm, Morland, along the bank of the Potomac.

Immigrant Grapes: The Odyssey of Forbidden Wines is still being shopped around at film festivals and awaiting a distributor. But I’m really looking forward to it, and DuCard owner Scott Elliff suggested he might host a viewing party.

Go see it. And pair the viewing with a 2023 Norton…or Triskele.