Fer
varietal
Fer (also known as Fer Servadou, Pinenc, Mansois and several other synonyms) is a red French wine grape variety that is grown primarily in South West France and is most notable for its role in the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) wines of Gaillac, Marcillac and Béarn but can also be found as minor component in the wines of Madiran, Cabardès and Bergerac. The grape is also featured in red blends from several vin de pays regions in the south west with significant plantings coming from the Aveyron department.
According to wine expert Oz Clarke, wine made from Fer is often characterized by its perfumed aromas of currants and red fruit, soft tannins, and concentration in fruit. The grape is not related to the clone of Malbec known as Fer that is widely planted throughout Argentina.
The name Fer is French for iron (Latin Ferrum), a reference to the very hard and "iron-like" wood of the vine's above ground canopy. Because of this very hard wood stock, the vine can be difficult to prune and trellis.
History
Fer has a long tradition in the southwestern wine regions of France and is possibly indigenous to the area. For centuries many of the full-bodied red wines of the many wine-producing communes often included some percentage of Fer in the blend. The grape was prized for the color and concentration it added even though viticulture and cultivation could be difficult due to its extremely hard wood stock. Though the grape developed numerous synonyms throughout the region, the "iron-like" hardness of the vine's wood gave rise to its primary name, Fer, which is also the French word for iron.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.