Chancellor, Seibel 7053, was developed in France during the late 1800s by Albert Siebel and is still grown widely in France, primarily for Bordeaux red wine. As of the late 1980s, France still had nearly 100,000 acres of it still being grown there. As its popularity in France would indicate, Chancellor is a vigorous and fruitful vine that produces excellent dark, rich wines. Its susceptibility to downy mildew, however, especially in hot, moist, and calm locations, can limit successful cultivation.

It has been grown successfully in USA when disease control programs for downy mildew have been adequate. Wine quality is good and winery demand for Chancellor is strong, but we do not anticipate expanded acreage of Chancellor because of this disease susceptibility. We have 1 1/2 acres of Chancellor. With Tom's expertise in viticulture, we have been very pleased with the quality and the production. Chancellor is moderately cold hardy. We have had it trained on VSP (Vertical Shoot Positioned), a low bilateral cordon with vertical growth. Catch wires are used to support vertical growth. It has had excellent crops for our winemakers. 

 In 2011-2012 Tom starting changing the trellis system to high wire  to keep the fruit out of harm's way from deer.  He said of their vertical growth, that they would just have to learn how to grow on a high wire system. 

Most of our winemakers blend it with other red hybrids. One favorite is a Chancellor-Chelois blend. A blend of Chancellor and Chambourcin is another favorite of a well-known winery. These blends can be lightly fermented on the skins for 4-6 days and do well lightly oaked. The wines from blends and straight Chancellor have moderate tannin and good acidity. They are drinkable young and yet will age well in the bottle. Wines made from juice (our juice is cold pressed and has fairly nice color) make a fairly dark light red. Color can be enhanced with the addition of a small amount of Colobel or a bag of skins added for the initial fermentation. It is an important component of our Baron’s Red.

Chancellor ripens in mid October and can be ordered as grapes or juice. If you want a Chancellor-Chambourcin blend and need to make one pickup, you could order the Chancellor as juice and the Chambourcin as grapes. Chancellor also makes a great jelly. For best color and body we recommend making your jellies from grapes. Even if you want only 5 pounds of grapes, please order them. We usually do not have excess grapes available other than the Vinifera reds.