The grape at the root of Bordeaux's founding legend. Writing in the first century, Pliny the Elder and Columella describe a hardy, rot-resistant black vine of the Bituriges — the Gaulish people around Burdigala, today's Bordeaux — which they call Biturica or Balisca. Its name shadows the region's own, and the old Bordeaux synonym "Vidure" (hard-wood) for the Cabernets has long tempted writers to read Biturica as their distant ancestor.
DNA has since closed that door. Cabernet Sauvignon is a spontaneous seventeenth-century cross of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, and no traceable line connects it — or any living grape — to Pliny's vine. Biturica remains a name from the texts: real as a word the Romans wrote, legendary as a grape we could ever point to.