A classical family tree represents the descendants of a person or another living being and is part of the genealogy (genealogy). It is impossible to represent the descent of "all" grape varieties or even just a few in this form and fails for several reasons. The biologist Andreas Jung remarks the following: Although there are many individual parent-offspring relationships, there are no real pedigrees, because often only the mother is clear and the father is missing, as is the case with the numerous seedlings of Gouais Blanc (White Heunisch). Every seed (kernel) in a berry is in principle a potential new grape variety, but it only becomes a new grape variety when the kernel reaches the earth, germinates there and grows into a vine. Within a berry with 5 to 6 seeds, the fathers can be 5 to 6 varieties, depending on the pollen that was blown up during flowering.
Furthermore, pedigrees simulate a temporal sequence and spatial limitation, which need not be the case with grape varieties. The descendants of the Gouais Blanc may have been created more or less simultaneously in one place from a few grapes or in several places over a period of several thousand years. For example, uncles and aunts may have been imported with their mother from Transcaucasia in ancient times, while the children at the new planting site of the mother variety may have developed spontaneously from seeds. There is no generational succession in grape varieties, as in mammals or humans, as they are potentially immortal and can often be grown in various places and over long periods of time. Spontaneous children of these varieties could be born in Australia, America, South Africa and Europe, cross-bred with what just supplied pollen in the environment.
The grandchildren in the mixed set can pollinate the grandmother and aunt, creating a kind of incest. As long as the children and grandchildren in the mixed set are planted, there can be plenty of cross incest anyone with anyone. Dozens of fathers, as pollen donors in the mixed set, can pollinate the individual flowers of a single vine. When these seeds are sown, masses of stepbrothers and stepsisters with one mother and many fathers are produced and vice versa. The fathers of one are the mothers of the others. The vines that are cultivated are hermaphrodites. And then it gets complicated with the family trees. One type of mother, several fathers, the father of one is the mother of the other, and all this simultaneously during one week of flowering. Or the same game with the same parents, but spread over thousands of years. Most of the cultivated varieties grown in Western Europe today are the result of a relatively small group of so-called lead varieties, such as Gouais Blanc, Pinot and Traminer and their spontaneous crosses. See also a list of relevant keywords under vine.