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Percentage of respondents to a recent poll on my Facebook page who said that cannabis-infused wine will be a big category within the next decade. As of January 1, 2018, cannabis became fully legal (meaning not just for medical use) in California.

The exact genetic offspring of a mother vine is called a:

A. clone

B. scion

C. hybrid

D. shoot

The noun “clone” refers to plants of the same species that have identical physical characteristics. The DNA of a grapevine is not stagnant, so in Nature, clones emerge and evolve as the result of natural genetic mutations taking place over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. A grape variety may have many clones (like pinot noir), or relatively few (like sauvignon blanc). Two different clones of the same grape variety may taste remarkably different. Clone is also a verb. In viticulture, “to clone” means to propagate a group of vines from a “mother” vine that has desirable characteristics. These characteristics may include qualities such as resistance to certain diseases, berry size, and/or flavor attributes.

“No critic should forget, as he dallies with epithets, sipping his oak-fermented chardonnay or rates one precious bottle half a point behind another, that wine is one of the miracles of nature, and that its 10,000 years of partnership with man has not removed the element of mystery, that independent life that alone among all foods has made men think of it as divine.”

—Hugh Johnson, co-author, The World Atlas of Wine

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