Vitis Vinifera: The Dog of the Plant World | Lecture Insights
Discover the fascinating evolution of Vitis vinifera, the wine grape, and its parallels with dog domestication in this insightful lecture summary. Learn about the worldwide diffusion of Vitis vinifera and its co-evolution with humans.
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Video Transcript
So we learned from the previous lecture on the 8 to 10,000 year history of the diffusion of
Vitis vinifera from the Caucasus Mountain region to the rest of the entire planet.
Just a few things in
summation here to start.
One, I didn't point out that which I should have which is that
Vitis vinifera I really want you to think of as like the dog of the plant world.
You're never gonna forget this analogy by the way.
The dog of the plant world? What do I mean?
Vitis vinifera, the wine grape, it only evolved into its great diversity we see in today's world
and its great worldwide diffusion that we see in today's world
due to human cohabitation and co-evolution
much the same way dogs did.
Now for those of you that don't understand anything about evolution or don't believe it...
And there are some of you out there, so just turn off the video for now.
But all dogs, you know dogs, right? You don't know much about grapes, but you know dogs.
And dogs have this endless variety.
There's like thousands and thousands of subspecies or breeds of dog that you recognize
and all of them look wildly different.
But here's the deal.
They all came from one single species a long time ago that used to be a wolf.
And because certain wolves would hang around the human campfires or the campsites and then humans started to
incorporate the nice wolves to be protectors and then over the years through cohabitation and
selection, not natural selection, human selection of certain breeds of this wolf dog that they liked, you started to get
variations off the major theme
into the thousands of different breeds of dogs that we have today 10,000 years later.
Same story with...
grapes because humans liked, and early humans at the dawn of Western civilization,
liked this particular plant so much
they started tweaking it and
selecting out the ones that they liked and moving it with them as they moved around the globe.
Huh? You like that analogy? Dog of the plant world. And that brings me to point two.
Vitis vinifera. I mean why would humans
select and cohabitate and co-evolve with this particular plant.
Well, the same reason that humans like dogs,
they really like this one particular great plant.
That is because vitus vinifera ends up being
the total wine package or the perfect package for wine if you like.
Because while all grapes on the planet and actually all fruits,
to some extent have sugars and acids and maybe even tannic and phenolic components,
Vitis vinifera just has the absolute magic formula for wine production.
Again, all grapes...
have some sugars, some acids, some tannins, some phenolics.
Vitus vinifera has the exact composition that is perfect for wine production.
Perfect because it produces higher alcohol wines, perfect because it has certain flavored wines,
perfect because it has these tannins which help build the structure for the wine and actually help the longevity of the wine.
So you can make wine out of all the other stuff we talked about. Vitus vinifera is just the best, the perfect
package for it and you combine that perfect chemical composition magic with the
preferable flavors and aroma profile of vitis vinifera
and it's just unmatched in the grape world for its wine potential and
unmatched in the fruit world in general for its wine making potential.
