Genomics revises the domestication story

The long-standing account had grapevine domestication occurring once, in the South Caucasus, and spreading from there.

A large 2023 study sequencing thousands of wild and cultivated accessions indicated at least two roughly contemporaneous domestication events — one in Western Asia and one in the Caucasus — with the Western Asian lineage subsequently spreading into Europe and interbreeding with local wild vines.

That interbreeding matters for how European varieties are understood: they are not simply transplanted Caucasian material but the product of introgression with local wild populations.

The field is active and the specifics should be treated as current rather than settled. What is reasonably secure is that the single-origin account is no longer the consensus.