But now, a group of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Susan Hubbard, are lending a high-tech hand to California's grape-growers.

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Some of our oldest grape vines are Zinfandel vines, indeed, before Prohibition it was the most widely planted grape in California.

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The number of California acres planted with this grape jumped from 25, 000 in 2005 to 28, 000 the next year.

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When they compared these with the same sites in 50 other grape varieties from the vineyards of California, they discovered that they got a perfect match with only two of them.

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California has also managed to import some of the grape's Old World confusion factor, since the state's wineries tend to label bottles "Pinot Grigio" or "Pinot Gris" based on whim rather than wine style.

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Outside of France, the grape variety finds a home in Austria, Australia and California and Oregon in the U.S., as well as in the San Antonio Valley in Chile, where it produces an intense pungent aroma with notes of grapefruit and ginger.

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"It has become an expensive hobby, but there is so much potential in Texas wines especially in this area, " said Pruitt, who grew up in near California's wine-rich Santa Ynez Valley and still sources much of his grape juice from there.

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