L'Acadie blanc

L'Acadie blanc is a white Canadian wine grape variety that is a hybrid crossing of Cascade and Seyve-Villard 14-287. The grape was created in 1953 by grape breeder Ollie A. Bradt in Niagara, Ontario at the Vineland Horticultural Research Station which is now the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre. Today the grape is widely planted in Nova Scotia with some plantings in Quebec and Ontario. Some wine writers, including those at Appellation America, consider L'Acadie blanc as "Nova Scotia’s equivalent to Chardonnay". The grape is considered a complex hybrid which means that it has genes from several different species of genus Vitis in its lineage. The full lineage of L'Acadie blanc was mapped out by Helen Fisher of the University of Guelph and revealed that the grape has members from eight different Vitis species including Vitis aestivalis, Vitis berlandieri, Vitis cinerea, Vitis labrusca, Vitis lincecumii, Vitis riparia, Vitis rupestris and Vitis vinifera. In contrast, around 99% of the world's wine is made from grapes belonging only to Vitis vinifera species. History and pedigree L'Acadie blanc was created in 1953 by Ollie Bradt at the Vineland research center in Niagara, Ontario. The grape is a crossing the Seibel grape Cascade and the Villard grape Seyve-Villard 14-287, both bred by French horticulturalist. Cuttings of the new grape variety were sent to the Kentville research station (now known as the Kentville Research and Development Centre) in Kentville, Nova Scotia. Here the grape was given the name L'Acadie blanc after Acadia, the former New France colony that is now part of The Maritimes in eastern Canada.