The natural world is full of chance events and surprising coincidences, some of which are truly wonderful. In the past few weeks, for example, I’ve been reading about one genetic fluke for which wine lovers like me should be very thankful. Nobody is sure when or where this event took place - although it was probably more than 3,300 years ago, somewhere in southern Europe. In any case, those details are less significant than their outcome: the evolution of the white wine grape.

The story of how this coincidence was discovered begins in 2005, when Japanese researchers found that a gene known by the acronym VvMYBA1 was implicated in the difference between red and white grapes in the species Vitis vinifera, the grapevine species used to produce almost all the white and red wine varieties sold today. The Japanese team found that VvMYBA1 was capable of controlling the production of a type of pigment in the skin of grapes known as anthocyanin, variations of which are also found in other fruits and vegetables such as apples, strawberries, purple cabbage and blueberries.