Gamay Beaujolais Gamay Beaujolais Gamay Beaujolais is a varietal designation for a Californian grape variety, an early ripening clone of Pinot noir. In the late 1930s, an early pioneer of the American viticulture, Paul Masson, brought with him several Burgundian grapes for his winery in California. One of those grapes he believed to be the Gamay variety from the Beaujolais region in France, which in the 1940s University of California at Davis (UCD) researchers christened "Gamay Beaujolais". In the late 1960s, UCD scientists decided that Gamay Beaujolais was a clonal selection of Pinot noir, and that California's version of the true Gamay
Peloursin California vineyards that thought they were planted with Durif/Petite Sirah were found to be field blends that contain some plantings of Peloursin. In addition to being a parent of Durif, Peloursin was also crossed with Persan to create Joubertin. DNA testing also suggest a relationship between Peloursin and Bia blanc which share some morphological similarities but the exact nature of that relationship is not yet known. Plantings of Peloursin are often confused with its offspring Durif and this was particularly the case in California where many plantings of Petite Sirah/Durif were discovered to actually be Peloursin. In the Jura region,