Aglianico

Aglianico (pronounced [aʎˈʎaːniko], roughly "ahl-YAH-nee-koe") is a black grape grown in the southern regions of Italy, mostly Basilicata and Campania.

The vine originated in Greece and was brought to the south of Italy by Greek settlers. The name may be a corruption of vitis hellenica, Latin for "Greek vine." Another etymology posits a corruption of Apulianicum, the Latin name for the whole of southern Italy in the time of ancient Rome. During this period, it was the principal grape of the famous Falernian wine, the Roman equivalent of a first-growth wine today.

Oenologist Denis Dubourdieu has said "Aglianico is probably the grape with the longest consumer history of all."

History

The vine is believed to have first been cultivated in Greece by the Phoceans from an ancestral vine that ampelographers have not yet identified. From Greece it was brought into Italy by settlers at Cumae, near modern-day Pozzuoli, and from there spread to various points in the regions of Campania and Basilicata. While still grown in Italy, the original Greek plantings seem to have disappeared. In ancient Rome, the grape was the principal component of the world's earliest first-growth wine, Falernian. Along with a white grape known as Greco (today grown as Greco di Tufo), the grape was commented on by Pliny the Elder, the maker of some of the highest-ranked wines in Roman times.