Conference: the native wild vine, mother of all grape varieties.

Max ANDRÉ is HC Associate Professor of Life and Earth Sciences, President of the Botanical Society of Franche-Comté (SBFC), Vice-President of the Conservatoire Botanique National de FC - Observatoire régional des Invertébrés (CBNFC-ORI), botanist. The native wild vine, mother of all grape varieties: The savage lambrusque, Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris, is the ancestor of cultivated vines and should not be confused with the many «silty» vines, American or Franco-American rootstocks most often. It has become rare and threatened in France and in Europe for multiple reasons: destruction or modification of its habitat, logging, various developments and genetic pollution. Recent prospections have allowed us to discover important stations in the Jura massif. This metapopulation, one of the most important known to date in Europe, has its own characteristics: these wild vines occupy mainly exceptional colluvial forests with high naturalness as well in ubac as in adret. The biology of the species largely explains this situation. A link is established between these wild vines and an emblematic and ancestral grape of the Jura and Alsatian vineyards, the Savagnin or Traminer. Postcultural vineyards, history of French vineyards: The health crisis of the second half of the 19th century led to a profound transformation of historic vineyards. The old vineyard plots and the roadsides keep, in part, the memory of the history of French viticulture. Studying these vines is touching with a finger the ingenuity of a generation of scientists, nurserymen and winemakers who saved the French viticulture by creating artificial hybridsgrafts of our traditional grape varieties or direct producers for the production of family wines.