The Domaine de Vassal houses one of the largest ampelographic collections in the world. The site is located between Agde and Sète on a strip of sand between the Mediterranean Sea and the Étang de Thau lagoon (a body of water separated from the sea) in Marseillan about 50 kilometres from Montpellier in the Hérault department. The site is now managed by INRAE (formerly INRA), "Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement".
The first collection was established in 1876 at the École d'agriculture de Montpellier (now Montpellier SupAgro) due to the phylloxera disaster, in order to preserve grape varieties from all continents that were threatened by the pest. The small area and the mediocre hygienic condition of the specimens led Professor Jean Branas (1905-1998) to transfer the collection to the Domaine de Vassal owned by INRA (old name of INRAE) from 1949 to 1950. The choice of a sandy soil was determined by the fact that phylloxera cannot develop there and, moreover, virus vector nematodes cannot multiply. Therefore, healthy and diseased vines can be combined.
The ampelographer Paul Truel (1924-2014) was responsible for the collection from 1954 to 1984. He was instrumental in the introduction, description and precise identification of numerous grapevine varieties. The herbarium covers 19 hectares of vineyards and a nursery with 400 m² of greenhouses. The collection consists of 7,800 plants from 54 countries with around 60 vine species. These are 2,700 grape varieties of the species Vitis vinifera, 1,100 interspecific hybrids, 400 rootstocks and 350 wild gra pevines. In addition, around 2,000 recent varieties, i.e. varieties that are extinct or no longer used in viticulture (e.g. Verdanel), are also cultivated. The collection is enriched with novelties every year. In 2021, a project was launched to transfer the facility to INRAE's Pech Rouge field office in Gruissan in the Aude département.
The "Centre de Ressources Biologiques de la Vigne (CRB-Vigne) de Vassal-Montpellier" is dedicated to the conservation, characterisation and improvement of grapevine genetic resources at the Domaine de Vassal. It participates in research programmes at national, European or international level in cooperation with the IFV.
Étang de Thau: by Christian Ferrer, CC BY-SA 3.0, link
