Rubired

Rubired is a variety of red grape used to make red wine in several Australia vineyards. It is also a major source of red food coloring in California.

Rubired is a tinturier variety, meaning that it has pigmented juice. Most red wine grapes have clear juice; the red color of wines comes from extraction of pigment from the wine skins, not the grape juice itself. Tenturiers have pigment in both the skin and the juice making them useful for blending color into otherwise light-colored wines. Rubired can often be identified from the road in the fall because its leaves will turn to bright red instead of yellow / brown.

The variety was created by Dr. Harold Olmo, a viticulturist, at University of California at Davis in California as a blend of the grapes Tinto Cão and Alicante Ganzin. Originally intended to create port, its intensely dark colour means that it is often used as a colouring in other red wines, but it is also used to make a red wine in its own right. In California, most of this variety is used to create grape concentrate for non-wine food purposes as it serves both as a natural food color and sweetener.

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