I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, If you'll look back through grape genetic charts, you'll see that many of our favorite varieties today are related to a select few

handfuls of ancestors. Several of our most popular varieties can trace their

parentage or grandparentage to Guee Blanc, a grape variety that's rare today, but was once extremely popular in the Middle Ages.

A few other ancient varieties, Tremina, Muscat, and Pino are repeatedly found high up on the family trees of so many of our favorite varieties.

And Tremener is most likely a grandparent of Rieslink.

Rieslink shares a parent with Romerantant, Malone, Chardonnay, Gameh, and Ferment, making them all fairly close relatives. Reesling has many children as well, mostly because Reesling was used as a parent by several

viticulturalists at Geysenheim, who worked towards creating stronger Reesling hybrids

in the late 1800s.

Their work was fueled in part to combat Veloxera

and also to find heartier grape varieties that could sustain cold temperatures.

Reesling was probably born sometime between 1300 and 1500.

And by the late 1400s, Reesling was most likely popular in the Rhinegau, which is also its probable reason. In the

Riesling was most likely popular in the Rhinegau, which is also its probable region of origin.

Within a few centuries, it was the dominant grape in Germany.

By the late 1800s, Riesling, especially Moses Riesling, was one of the world's most

sought after wines. And its popularity helped spread through world fairs and global exhibitions.

You could even find bottles of German Riesling for sale rather easily in the Midwest of the United States in the late 1800s.

Reesling's popularity and quality made it one of the first grape varieties to successfully

jump continents. It was brought to Australia by Lutheran

Exiles in the 1850s and has since continued to play an important part in Ossie White's.

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