CSIRO failed to heed the serious warnings that emerged in 1998 of the risk it was supplying wine grape growers seeking albarino with the wrong variety.
Growers who thought they had the fashionable Spanish variety were devastated this month to find their vines were in fact the French variety savagnin blanc, not to be confused with sauvignon blanc.
The misidentification was confirmed by DNA testing carried out on the "mother vines" at CSIRO's Merbein vineyard after a visiting French expert raised alarm bells last year.
But while it has taken until now for CSIRO to check its vines, an investigation by The Weekly Times reveals the misidentification of albarino vines in Spain was common knowledge as far back as 1998.
And a paper by Australian research scientist and winegrower Dr Chris Bourke raised questions about the identity of Australian albarino in 2004.
Mr Bourke also told The Weekly Times an international paper written in 1998 had detailed how the Spanish had distributed savagnin as albarino.
"There's been discussion on it for about 20 or 25 years - the first query on it I can recall was 1985 when a French expert identified albarino vines in Portugal as being savagnin," Dr Bourke said.
"The mislabelling issue was not raised until a 1998 paper by the Spaniards which suggested they'd mislabelled some vines in their collection then there was one (paper) out of Italy in 2002."
Asked if CSIRO should have conducted DNA testing in 2004 when his paper came out, Dr Bourke said: "Obviously my answer would be yes." Wine maker Rollo Crittenden, from Crittenden Estate on the Mornington Peninsula, said the Bourke paper alone was five years old.
"If the CSIRO would have been aware and followed up, then people like us who made plantings two years ago would have been saved from financial burden," Mr Crittenden said.
Mr Bourke defended the CSIRO, and said the Spanish Government authority from which the CSIRO sourced the vines should be held responsible for the situation.
"I'm very sympathetic to growers - the blame should go to the Spaniards. They claim it's a Spanish variety and is very important, yet released material that's not correct through government regulated research institutes," Dr Bourke said.
Growers from around Australia who had thought they were growing albarino will meet in Adelaide on Friday to discuss how to move forward.
A CSIRO representative had not returned phone calls from The Weekly Times at the time of going to print.
