Native Wine Grapes of Italy

NATIVE WINE GRAPES of ITALY

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the General Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation.

The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Educated Palates Circle of the University of California Press Foundation, whose members are

Elizabeth and David Birka-White

Judith and Kim Maxwell

James and Carlin Naify

Ramsay Family Foundation

Patricia and David Schwartz

Meryl and Robert Selig

Peter and Chinami Stern

NATIVE WINE GRAPES of ITALY

Ian D’Agata

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley        Los Angeles        London

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 2014 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

D’Agata, Ian.

    Native wine grapes of Italy / Ian D’Agata.

        p.    cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-27226-2 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-520-95705-3 (ebook)

    1. Grapes—Varieties—Italy.  2. Wine and wine making—Italy.  I. Title.

    SB398.28.D34    2014

    634.80945—dc23

2013041569

Manufactured in the United States of America

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10    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 2002) (Permanence of Paper).

CONTENTS

Preface

Map of Italy’s Wine Regions

Native Grapes by Region

Introduction: Understanding Native and Classifying Grape Varieties

PART I Grape Varieties: What, Where, When, Why, and How

1 Ampelology: The Art and Science of Grape Variety Identification

2 The Origin of Viticulture and a Brief History of Italy’s Grape Varieties

PART II Italy’s Native and Traditional Grape Varieties and Wines

3 Grape Groups and Families

4 Major Native and Traditional Grape Varieties

5 Little-Known Native and Traditional Grape Varieties

6 Crossings

Appendix

Glossary

Bibliography

General Index

Index of Grape Varieties

PREFACE

I hold a deep-rooted passion for the native grapes and wines of Italy. Though I am also a great fan of Riesling, Pinot Nero, Merlot, and proper Cabernet Franc (how can any wine lover not be?), it is wines made with Italy’s native grapes I would want with me if banished to a desert island (given that Gwyneth Paltrow is already taken).

I have always been fascinated by the rich diversity of Italy’s innumerable grape varieties. In 2001 I wrote the first series of detailed articles on a number of Italy’s native grapes for Porthos, then a mainstream Italian wine magazine. I followed this up by doing the same for the Gambero Rosso magazine in 2002 and 2003, which led to the publication that year of the first guidebook ever specifically devoted to Italian native grapes and wines. Every time I catch up with Marco Sabellico, currently the elder curator of Gambero Rosso’s annual wine guide, our memories invariably drift back to what at the time seemed like an infinite string of late summer nights, a desperate and ultimately successful attempt at meeting our deadline. Whereas as recently as 2000 practically nobody in Italy ever wrote of wines in terms of native and international grapes, there are now myriad books and websites devoted to these subjects.

I now write about the world’s many wonderful wines for Stephen Tanzer and his prestigious International Wine Cellar, and more recently, for the British wine magazine Decanter. However, I still champion native grapes and wines, and the people who have devoted their lives to them. I am enthralled with native grapes, each one’s long-standing relationship with its local geology and climate, and how each one is expressed in unique wines. An added plus is the cultural bond these grapes have established with local people, territories, and traditions. Unfortunately, when I started out, little was known about these grapes and virtually nothing was being written about them; worse still, many were at risk of extinction. Given my love for drawing and my medical background (including a couple of years of bench research, spent doing western blots and learning polymerase chain reaction tests, the latter a technique also used for grapevine identification), I was naturally attracted to ampelology, the science that studies and identifies grape varieties. Over the years, I always paid more attention to the grapes people were using, and obsessed a great deal less than most about, for example, the type of oak or yeasts they used. Already then, I believed that understanding single grape varieties (as well as the relationships that different varieties have with each other) inevitably leads to a better understanding of the wines made from those varieties. Still today, I feel the need to broadcast and promote the as yet untapped potential of native grapes and wines: and not just Italy’s, for that matter.

The book you hold in your hands is the summa of close to thirty years spent in the company of wine, and more pertinently, thirteen years of research, vineyard walks, and interviews especially devoted to the native grapes and wines of Italy. It is intended as both an academic text and a practical guide to the rich grape biodiversity that is Italy-and not just to the rich and famous jet set of Sangiovese or Nebbiolo, but also to Bellone, Centesimino, Rossese di Dolceacqua, and many others. This book is not for those who cannot manage without one-hundred-point scores, inky-black hues, sexy smokiness, mouthcoating concentration, and all the rest of it. It will be appreciated even less by those who regard native grapes as a marketing ploy at best, or a nuisance at worst. No, this book is for all who realize that wine is not a soft drink, industrially made and replicable ad nauseam independently of its ties to the land, the history, the social context, and the people who live and make it. Most of all, it is for those who understand that wine cannot and should not be viewed independently of the grape varieties used to make it.

It is not my intention to give the impression that native grapes are better than international ones, or that traditionally made wines are more interesting than those made with an eye to modern tastes. There is no right or wrong way to enjoy wine, and each one of us will appreciate the aspect of wine that intrigues us most. Wine allows all of us to learn about new people and places, and I have always found that Italy’s native grapes are a great way to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the sometimes crazy but always wonderful country that Italy is. Wine is nothing more and nothing less than a journey of discovery, and native grapes have always been one of my most trusted guides. To take the road less traveled does make all the difference: for me, it has been a long and at times trying experience, but mostly fun, and always instructive. While turning the pages of this book, my hope is you will enjoy the ride as much as I have.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book describes all the native varieties used to make wine in commercially significant volumes in Italy as of the date of writing. I will analyze why some grapes are better characterized than others. Historical, viticultural, and enological data illustrating the quality of the grapes and the wines (clones, rootstocks, soils, fermentation temperatures) and university studies documenting parentage and genetic makeup have been included. This is not possible for every grape, because of the paucity of scientific information on many of Italy’s native varieties. In these cases, I have relied on my own years of observation and the experience and memory of older farmers and producers who have been the secret defenders of many an Italian native variety. Unburdened by the need to sell their wines-made mainly for personal consumption-their memories and comments are more useful than those of some consultant winemakers and producers plugging better known and easier to work with varieties.

There are two main sections to this book. Part I is an introduction to wine grapes: how they are classified and identified, their history, and why a variety-based approach to wine may not be a bad idea. The great potential of Italy’s native grapes and wines and some worrisome trends are also analyzed, and a region by region list of varieties is provided.

Part II is devoted to describing about five hundred native grape varieties of Italy, all those for which either accurate DNA test results or, for less common cultivars, sufficient anecdotal, historic, viticultural, and enologic data are available. Truly monovarietal wines (not blends including other grapes) made from these varieties are listed and briefly described; many are on sale in and outside Italy. The best producers to look for are also listed.

Writing Grape and Wine Names: The Right Name for Each Variety

The 2004 International Code for Nomenclature of Cultivated Plants stipulates that grape variety names be written in normal block letters, with the first letter capitalized and the name placed between single quotation marks: for example, ‘Chardonnay’ or ‘Vermentino’ (Brickell, Baum, Hetterscheid, Leslie, McNeill, Trehane, et al. 2004). Writing wine grape names in this way is typical of academic journals, and some books too. However, in most-though not all-wine texts, authors capitalize grape variety names and omit quotation marks. Interestingly, José Vouillamoz and Giulio Moriondo, in their recent and thoroughly excellent book Origine des cépages valaisans et valdôtains, chose to use the more scholarly, and accurate, approach, and clearly state that this is the way grape names ought to be written. One of Italy’s most famous grape wine scientists, Attilio Scienza of the University of Milan, confirms that the correct approach is to place grape variety names in quotation marks, or alternatively, to omit the marks but use italics. Nevertheless, as this approach is unfamiliar to the wine-loving public, and as it is never used by mainstream wine writers and wine magazines, I shall resort to writing grape variety names as most everyone else writing about wine today does.

Instead, names referring to general grape groups or families are written in italics, with the first initial capitalized, and without quotation marks: for example, the Grecos or the Trebbiano family. Wines that have the same name as the cultivar are written in normal block letters, but are not capitalized. Thus, sangiovese refers to the wine, while Sangiovese refers to the grape, though most of the time I’ll just write Sangiovese wine. When the wine name is an official one, such as a Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC), then it will be capitalized: for example, Sangiovese di Romagna. As some Italian wines carry the name of a specific town or place, their names are capitalized. For example, Barolo or Soave, which are the names of two towns as well as of two wines.

I always call Italian native grape varieties by the name most commonly used in Italian; thus, names in dialects or other languages are listed among synonyms or aliases, even when the latter are more frequently used in local production zones. Therefore, I will always write Pinot Nero not Pinot Noir, and Scimiscia’ not Cimixia. Variety entries are listed in alphabetical order. Similarly named varieties (for example, Greco Giallo or Greco Nero) are grouped together with all others sporting similar names (for example, the Greco group), though we now know some of these varieties to be unrelated. Whenever genetic tests have clarified that similarly named varieties are unrelated, I will make that explicit.

For wine producers, I use the simplest but most recognizable names. Though this may not be technically exact, it allows you to readily identify wines so that you may find and buy them. For instance, rather than list Fattoria di Felsina, I list Felsina; I list Frescobaldi, as opposed to Marchese de’ Frescobaldi. Since people tend to fasten on the name most prominently visible on the label, these are very likely the names you and your wine store clerk will go by.

Finally, as some of the terms in this book can prove difficult for those who are neither wine experts nor have scientific backgrounds, a glossary of terms in the back of the book will, I hope, shed light on some of the issues discussed.

Traditional and International Varieties

This book does not discuss obvious international varieties such as Pinot Nero or Gewürztraminer, but it does tackle varieties that have been traditional to specific parts of Italy for hundreds of years and are integral to wines considered archetypal of a region’s production. I offer more precise definitions of international and traditional grape varieties in the Introduction. Examples include Sardinia’s Cannonao (called Alicante, Granaccia, Guarnaccia, and Tai or Tocai Rosso elsewhere in Italy), better known in the rest of the world as Grenache, and its Carignano, better known by English- and French-speaking wine lovers as Carignan. These two are traditional Italian grapes: indeed, there are hardly grapes and wines more traditional of Sardinia.

Gewürztraminer is most commonly associated with Alsace in France, where centuries ago the mutation turning the nonaromatic Traminer variety (native to the Alto Adige town of Termeno or Tramin that gave it its name) into the spicy variant called Gewürztraminer probably occurred. In fact, the German prefix gewürz means spicy or aromatic. Though a lot of Gewürztraminer is grown in Italy’s Alto Adige (and to a much lesser extent in nearby Friuli Venezia Giulia and Trentino), it is neither native nor traditional to Italy; at best it is a traditional variety of Alto Adige, which only became part of Italy in 1917, after World War I. For the same reason, even though there are also significant plantings of Sylvaner, Kerner, and Müller-Thurgau in Alto Adige, we can neither consider them native nor traditional of Italy. At least, not yet.

Families and Groups, Major Varieties, Less-Known Varieties, and Crossings

To make the book easier to read, and to give readers a quick understanding of the relative importance of each native grape variety, I have broken down the rest of Italy’s native and traditional cultivars into four chapters: families and groups, major varieties, less-known varieties, and crossings. All related grapes, or those sporting similar names, are placed in chapter 3; chapter 4 is devoted to Italy’s most important grapes, such as Nebbiolo and Sangiovese; chapter 5 deals with the country’s many less-known varieties (some of which are very important locally); and finally, chapter 6 is devoted to the topic of hybrids and especially crossings, as hybrid grapes are not common in Italy.

The major varieties not only account for many of Italy’s best-known wines, but also are usually produced by more than one high-quality estate. In most cases the wines have a minimum total production of three thousand bottles a year. For each cultivar, a short list of estates making the best wines (and the name of each wine) is also included. I have listed those wines that are not only faithful to the variety, but may also, it is to be hoped, be easily found in stores outside Italy. Please note that in the context of this book, I will use the term pure wines only for monovarietal wines, made with 100 percent of the cultivar. I have gone to great lengths over the last thirteen years to ferret out truly monovarietal wines, and report only on those, for it is my belief that a wine made with 30 percent or 40 percent of a specific cultivar neither speaks of that variety nor should be used as an example of what that native grape variety is about. Monovarietal refers to a wine, while variety refers to a single kind of grape. So the Chardonnay grape is not a varietal, but a variety.

You will notice that the third category of grape is less-known varieties, rather than minor varieties: I believe that there are few truly minor varieties in Italy (or anywhere else), only less-studied and little-known ones. Undoubtedly in the future some will prove to have less potential for fine winemaking than others; but at our present state of knowledge, we simply don’t know which. Descriptions of these varieties will be forcibly shorter, as less is known about them and most do not have any monovarietal wines of note made from them-yet. Nearly all the grape varieties described in this book are officially included in the Registro Nazionale delle Varietà di Vite (less often called the Catalogo Istituzionale), Italy’s National Registry of Grape Varieties, which is controlled by Italy’s Ministry of Agriculture and updated annually. Varieties in this book that are not yet included within the registry are indicated as not registered. These as yet little-known varieties are either in the process of obtaining official certification (always a laborious and time-consuming endeavor in bureaucracy-happy Italy) or have enough supporting historical and anecdotal evidence that I believe them to be separate varieties.

In contrast, you will find that when I list recommended estates and wines for each variety, some well-known and award-winning wines supposedly made with specific native grapes are not included. This is because I am not comfortable with them for a variety of reasons, such as dubious winemaking or a lack of correspondence between the wine and what existing documentation, logic, and my experience (or that of locals) tells me the wine should taste like. After many years of researching these grapes, analyzing laboratory data, and tasting the wines, I have a good idea of what wines made with individual native and traditional grapes ought to taste like. Again, this book is the result of on-the-ground visits, tastings, and interviews and is not just a compendium of information gleaned from other sources.

I devote a small section to grapes derived from crossings: though they are certainly not native in the natural sense of that word, these are grapes that were created in Italian laboratories and are practically grown only in Italy.

Wine Ratings

Since this is not a wine guide, there is little need for scores, extensive tasting notes, and prices. However, as I have been tasting Italian wines in depth for close to thirty years, I do wish to offer you my impressions of the wines made with each specific grape variety. Each time I name an estate when discussing a grape variety, I address its ability to produce wine from that grape variety by using a three-star system. For the purposes of this book, the estates that perform best with a specific grape variety are scored three stars (***), the next most proficient estates earn two stars (**), and those making a reasonable product reflective of the grape variety are awarded one star (*). Please note: these scores reflect not which wines are most tasty or best made, but which are most archetypal of the native grape used. My goal is not to furnish yet another mind-numbing list of tasting notes and scores (for those who want tasting notes and scores for native wines, please allow me to suggest the in-depth wine articles and detailed tasting notes I write for the International Wine Cellar at www.internationalwinecellar.com), but to broadcast which estates produce wines that are typical of and faithful to specific grape varieties. For this reason, an estate may receive three stars for wines made with one grape variety and only two stars for wines from another grape they are less skilled with. This is a very important aspect of the book you are holding in your hands. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other text available to date in which most-if not all-the wines made with any given Italian native grape variety have been tasted by a professional wine writer with years of experience. Your guarantee in regard to the usefulness of the ratings and my impressions of the wines is that over these years I have actively researched and tasted the wines made from the grape varieties described in this book.

IN CONCLUSION . . .

The result of thirteen years of conducting interviews, walking vineyards, and tasting wines made from native Italian grapes is the book you hold in your hands. It details Italian native grapes and wines to a degree never attempted before, and it is as exhaustive as current knowledge allows it to be. Many of the Italian grape varieties named and described in this book have never been mentioned in any mainstream publication outside academic journals or scientific research. There may be native grapes and fine wines made in Italy that are not listed here, but there are not many, and I seize this opportunity to apologize to my readers and to producers whose fine wines and grapes I may have omitted. Also, I am greatly indebted to all those who were, over the years, generous and patient enough to allow me to taste from small experimental vats or to send me both finished wines and countless monovarietal samples. I realize the latter were never meant to see the light of day as such, their ultimate destination being estate blends, but they were absolutely invaluable in helping me form a native grape and wine palate. I am sure some producers and winemakers never really believed I would one day write about what I learned and tasted thanks to them; in the end, I hope this book has made all the time spent with, or for, me worthwhile.

Clearly, thanks to modern genetic advances and new biotechnologies becoming available at breakneck speed, progress is rapid in the field of native grapes, and what is held true today may easily be confuted tomorrow. In some respects this book, once published, will already be old. However, it represents by far the most thoroughly researched, in-depth, and accurate book on Italy’s native grapes and wines available today. I trust you will enjoy reading it as much as I did researching and writing it. Actually, as much as I did living it.

This book would not have been possible without wine producers and winemakers from all over Italy kindly sharing their knowledge, memories, time, and wines with me. I owe them all a huge thank-you. Special thanks go to my mom and dad, to Mark Ball, Bruce Levitt, John Macdonald, Stefano Polacchi, Orfeo Salvador, Attilio Scienza, Stephen Tanzer, and Gino Veronelli, some of whom were there in the beginning of my wine-tasting days, others who have led by example or helped me to become a better wine writer-in some respects, this book is their fault! A big thank-you to Caroline Knapp, my copyeditor, who has done an amazing job in correcting my text: at times I felt like I needed to go back to English writing class! A thank-you also to Julie Van Pelt, another copyeditor who stepped in briefly while Caroline was away on vacation, and Chalon Emmons, my production editor. Last but not least, a heartfelt thank-you to my sponsoring editor, Blake Edgar, for placing his faith and trust in me, and to everyone at the University of California Press who helped to make this book better and to let a young man’s love of Italy’s native grapes, history, and tradition live on long after him.

Italy’s Wine Regions

NATIVE GRAPES BY REGION

Introduction

UNDERSTANDING NATIVE AND CLASSIFYING GRAPE VARIETIES

ITALY HAS BY far the largest number of grape varieties from which to make wine. Even more than the blessing of ideal microclimates and geologically diverse soils, this rich biodiversity is the single greatest winemaking asset Italian producers share. Anna Schneider, one of Italy’s most famous and best ampelologists, estimated that there were roughly two thousand native grape cultivars (that is, cultivated grape varieties) in Italy as recently as 2006, but that impressive number depends upon who’s counting. Stoically attached to their grapes, Italians don’t look kindly on foreigners (or even Italians) who tell them that one of their cherished local varieties might actually hail from elsewhere. Other experts have also suggested that roughly one thousand of Italy’s cultivars had been genetically identified, more or less accurately (an important aspect I will broach in chapter 1), and that six hundred were being used to make wines in commercially significant numbers. More recent data suggests a somewhat lower number, identifying 377 (and possibly a few more) genetically distinct grape varieties that are used to make wine in commercially significant volumes (Robinson, Harding, and Vouillamoz 2012). However, the number of Italian native grapes is almost certainly much higher, as many of Italy’s native grapes remain unidentified, growing in scattered, hard-to-reach vineyards, their existence known to only a few local farmers. My own count sits at over five hundred, and despite my walking the vineyards and speaking to farmers and producers incessantly, there are probably still more native grapes out there in old, forgotten Italian vineyards that I am not aware of. Then again, some of the varieties in my list may soon be proven to be just biotypes or synonyms of other, better-known varieties. To the best of my knowledge-current scientific knowledge-the list of wine grapes I present in this book is an accurate and up-to-date compendium of Italy’s wine grape patrimony. But 377 is still an impressive number, and represents more native varieties than those of France, Spain, and Greece combined, the countries that boast the next largest numbers of native grapes. Considering that there are an estimated 1,368 vine varieties used to make wine in commercially significant numbers all over the world (Robinson, Harding, and Vouillamoz 2012), even if Italy were to boast only 377 native grapes, it would mean that almost 28 percent of the world’s varieties are native to Italy.

These grapes have called Italy their home for centuries, and Italians have been making wine from them for almost as long-wines not easily duplicated elsewhere. Speaking of them in terms of their nativeness reveals not an inferiority complex, but a justifiable pride: these grapes and wines speak of Italy to the world. In fact, the trump card for Italian wine producers is their potential to make world-class wines that exhibit aroma and flavor profiles altogether different from those well known to the wine-buying public. In other words, Italy’s native grapes and wines offer jaded wine-loving consumers something new and interesting, at times even something wild and wacky. These wines are every sommelier’s dream: delicious, food-friendly alternatives to the all-too-often overly alcoholic, oaky, tropical-fruit, or chocolate bombs that can be some chardonnays and cabernet sauvignons. And it’s not just sommeliers having a jamboree with Italian native grapes and wines: others are getting into the act. Italian native varieties such as Sangiovese and Nebbiolo are allowed in numerous American Viticultural Areas (AVAs), and producers all over the world are trying their hand at local versions of Barbera and Fiano wines, admittedly, with varying degrees of success. Universities are paying attention too: American universities have set up seminars on Italy’s native grapes and wines in their enology programs. With so many different grapes and wines to try, it is easy to understand why Italians have never felt the need to start ABC clubs, those groups of wine lovers who get together and drink "Anything But Chardonnay or Cabernet." Italians may do a lot of foolish things, but drinking their own Chardonnay wines is not one of them.

Grape varieties can be divided into three categories: native (also called autochthonous or indigenous), international (also called allochthonous or foreign), and traditional.

Native or autochthonous grape varieties are those that were born in a specific place and have remained almost exclusively associated with that location. In fact, the word autochthonous is of Greek derivation: from auto, meaning own, and khthôn, meaning earth. Alternatively, a variety may be considered native to a country even when its true birthplace was elsewhere, provided that the grape has been associated with its new country for a very long time, usually thousands of years. In fact, many (but probably not as many as we once thought) of the so-called Italian native grapes are actually of Greek or Middle Eastern origin, imported by returning Roman legionnaires, seafaring Phoenician traders, and Greek colonists throughout ancient times. Strictly speaking, not all of Italy’s grapes are therefore truly native: local might be a better term to describe those native varieties whose origin is not unequivocally Italian. However, many ancient grape varieties grown in Italy today bear minimal if any resemblance to grape varieties of their birthplaces, and can therefore be considered native to Italy for all intents and purposes.

At the opposite end of the grape spectrum, international grape varieties are those that have been planted everywhere within the last one hundred years, in hopes of duplicating the great wines of France. Grapes such as Chardonnay and Merlot are considered native to France but have become the ultimate international varieties. In fact, wines made with these grapes are so successful they have been planted extensively in Italy too.

Somewhere in the middle between native and international grapes are the traditional varieties: international varieties that have been grown in a specific place for three hundred to five hundred years (different experts favor different cut-offs; I would submit that three centuries is probably enough) and have become part of that land’s tradition. This is why Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Pinot Bianco, which have been grown in Italy’s Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions since the eighteenth century at least, are traditional to those areas, while Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, much later arrivals, are not. For a grape variety to be considered native or traditional, and hence an integral part of an ecosystem, it has to have lived there for a very long time.

Grapes can also be classified in other manners: national (grown all over the country), interregional (grown in more than one region), and regional (grown in only one region or in even more restricted areas). Alternatively, they can be classified as diffusely cultivated (when the total surface under vine is greater than one thousand hectares or 2,470 acres), locally cultivated (between one hundred and one thousand hectares), scarcely cultivated (between ten and one hundred hectares), and at risk of extinction (less than ten hectares). These two, more specific classification systems are mainly used by scientific researchers and those who study grape varieties closely.

For a variety of reasons, native grapes travel poorly and generally have a hard time when confronted with new environments; few become traditional or international varieties, though many producers all over the world are trying Italian native grapes with increasing gusto. For example, in Australia in 1994, Fred and Katrina Pizzini decided to graft Brachetto onto Cabernet Sauvignon vines and their new wine met with public and private acclaim. Brachetto beating out the king of red grapes himself? Would anyone have imagined that David and Goliath tale only ten years before? All over the world, wine lovers can now indulge in and explore new wines made with Brazilian Ancellotta, California Dolcetto, Chilean Nebbiolo, Mexican Aglianico, New York State Friulano, New Zealand Arneis, and many more. In general however, it’s tough to make fine wines from native grapes transported elsewhere. Unlike Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, which show great adaptive resources, native varieties often have low adaptability to external influences other than those typical of the habitats they have been exposed to over the centuries. Factors such as differences in soil and climate often significantly impact the behaviors of native varieties, and the resulting wines are almost always, at least initially, a far cry from the original Italian wines. Of course, we also know a lot less about Italy’s native grapes than we do about Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, since for the greatest part of the twentieth century they weren’t the focus of much academic study. I have no doubts that people outside Italy will eventually manage to harness the potential greatness of Nebbiolo or Brachetto; after all, we have seen this happen before (think Pinot Nero in California and Oregon). Slowly but surely, producers everywhere will get the hang of each Italian native grape’s requirements, growth kinetics, and interactions with new terroirs, and great non-Italian wines made with Italy’s native grapes will be much more common than they are today.

An example might be the famous Italian native variety Nebbiolo, the grape behind the world-renowned wines of Barolo and Barbaresco: outside Piedmont (and parts of Lombardy and Valle d’Aosta) it gives only moderately encouraging results. Not that foreign-produced Nebbiolo wines are bad-there are interesting Nebbiolo-wines made in California, Australia, and Chile-but currently they bear little resemblance to the Italian originals that made the grape variety famous. Witness the plight of Sangiovese in California and Washington: everyone’s new darling in the 1990s, much has since been uprooted in favor of other varieties. As Steve Heimoff has written, it turned out that Sangiovese by itself wasn’t very interesting and that California supertuscans were a fad that fizzled. Of course, it might just have been a case of being ahead of their time. Even Piero Antinori of the world-famous Tuscan firm Antinori, one of the world’s biggest Sangiovese experts, worried at first that his dream of making a great New World Sangiovese wine at Atlas Peak winery in Washington would never materialize. He recently told me that in the 1980s and 1990s, Sangiovese in North America was plagued by poor clones and farming techniques: instead, heavy thinning, strict canopy control and properly-timed irrigation are key. His winemaker at Atlas Peak, Darren Procsal, remembers that Antinori originally felt that they were overplanting Sangiovese, because not enough was yet known about the new terroir. Fortunately, time has allowed for a better understanding of the needs of Sangiovese in the United States, leading to new vineyards and good monovarietal Sangiovese wines by Noceto, Duxoup, Kris Curran, and others (see SANGIOVESE, chapter 4). Indeed, Piero Antinori now believes he might yet make an American Sangiovese wine that will make him proud.

With more research and experience, some native varieties may one day become truly international varieties, and some seem already headed in that direction. This is not a surprising turn of events, as producers are always on the lookout for new wine grape varieties that might prove better suited to wine production areas characterized by increasingly hot and dry conditions, and that might offer reduced disease potential and produce better wines. As fewer than fifteen wine grape varieties account for 90 percent of the wine grapes grown in the United States and France, you realize why producers everywhere are looking at Italy’s plethora of native grapes with increased interest. In many countries of the world, there are winemakers who hope to make great wines from native Italian varieties with a distinct, homegrown twist. Already in Australia, Argentina, Chile, and other countries, many wineries are making Nebbiolo and Barbera monovarietal wines or blends.

However, I want to stress that being native reaches far beyond mere semantics. Native grapes and wines hold cultural, financial, ecological, and social significance. In my view, native grapes are a part of the cultural capital theorized by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, those nonfinancial social assets which distinguish individuals and areas, propelling them beyond their economic means. Cultural capital allows entire areas to progress and prosper. Given recent market trends that show heightened consumer interest in native grapes and wines, defending and promoting native grapes and wines are a means to increase sales as well as defend the biodiversity of our environment.

Native grapes are also important from an ecological perspective. Evolution in winemaking over the centuries, and perceived consumer wishes for only the tried and true, have caused most present-day viticulture to be based on a limited number of cultivated varieties. This was not always so: farmers hang on to their crops proudly. Native grapes, by virtue of their long association with specific areas, are better able to cope with local microclimates and terroirs. In other words, each one is best adapted to its own particular habitat, allowing for more environmentally friendly viticulture.

Because they were not found anywhere else until only very recently, wines made with local grape varieties are special. To Italians, they represent Italy just as famous monuments, natural landmarks, or local recipes do. By virtue of the strong bond between these grapes and the people who have tended to them on a daily basis for centuries, they characterize specific areas of Italy. As French historian Fernand Braudel points out, it is not by chance that farmers view conservation as a social mission, since conserving these native grape varieties also conserves traditional ways of living (Giavedoni and Gily 2011).

As Italy only became a nation in 1861 when the Kingdom of Italy was officially born, people feel Lombard or Lazian before they feel Italian. To not understand this is to not understand Italy. It is therefore inevitable that native grapes, with their intimate links to specific areas, also speak of traditions and of identity: Friulians are Friulians not just because they were born in Udine or Gorizia but also because they prefer wines made with Friulano and Ribolla, instead of Sangiovese or Nebbiolo. This qualifies them as Friulian just as much as eating cjalsons or gubana rather than panzanella or coda alla vaccinara, dishes typical of other regions. Ultimately, wines made from native grapes remind us Italians of who we are and where we have come from: their roots dig deep within our collective memories. There is no future without a past.

NATIVE GRAPES: THE NUMBERS AND THE NAMES

The Numbers

Statistics are for losers, and never was this more evident than in trying to figure out how many of Italy’s hectares under vine are planted with native grapes. Actually, in this country just understanding the total number of hectares under vine is difficult, as numbers change from source to source. Furthermore, collection of data is slow at best: Italians carry out vineyard surveys only once a decade. For example, relative to the 2002 vintage (hardly yesterday), data from Italy’s National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT) cites 798,000 hectares under vine, while the UN Food and Agriculture Organization figure is 717,635 hectares; the discrepancies are due either to one source counting table grapes in addition to wine grapes, or confusing total hectares under vine with total hectares under vine in production. It follows that certainties on the exact diffusion of many native grapes in Italy are hard to come by.

Nevertheless, according to the most recent agricultural census performed by ISTAT in 2010, there are 652,000 hectares under vine in Italy. The latest data also shows the most common grape variety in Italy to be, by a large margin, Sangiovese. Of the top twenty planted grapes in Italy, sixteen are native and four are international varieties (Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, and Cabernet Sauvignon), and only two of these, Merlot and Chardonnay are in the top ten. (It should be noted that Merlot plantings fell by four thousand hectares, or 6 percent, between 2000 and 2010.) Of the sixteen Italian natives, fifteen are planted on ten thousand hectares or more. Three tables in the appendix reveal some patterns in the distribution of native grapes under cultivation in Italy. Table 1 shows the breakdown of the one hundred most-planted grape varieties in Italy, by total hectares in Italy and per single region; table 2 shows the total hectares planted to each variety from 1970 to 2010, so that positive or negative trends can be examined with greater ease. This data reveals that roughly seventy of Italy’s native grapes are grown on more than one thousand hectares, but close to two hundred are grown on less than one thousand hectares and for many others there are only a few dozen hectares under vine. Many of these native grapes have been neglected for the better part of the twentieth century, and are unfortunately now in danger of disappearing. Table 3 lists Italy’s lesser-known and rare grape varieties, by total hectares planted. I caution readers that due to many identification errors (see chapter 1 for more on the hits and misses of ampelology) these numbers have to be taken with a good grain of salt, especially for varieties easily confused with others (for example, Aglianicone and Ciliegiolo). On a positive note, the resurgence in the last decade of interest in native grapes and wines has focused awareness and investments so that many cultivars no longer risk extinction. Much work is still needed before any rediscovered variety has a chance to break through, since by Italian law a grape variety has to be officially recognized for it to be legally cultivated and propagated, which makes things harder for less abundant native grapes.

The National Registry of Grape Varieties is the official document listing the varieties authorized for cultivation in Italy; if a grapevine is not registered, then no plant material from that variety can be made available for propagation in commercial nurseries. At this writing, the registry lists 461 official grape varieties, but private individuals and institutions are working furiously to have more varieties included all the time. Therefore, the number of cultivars on the list increases steadily every year. Unfortunately the registry contains a number of errors (or more accurately, what seem to be mistakes at our present state of knowledge), because grape variety identification has become increasingly rapid while government bodies react slowly to change at the best of times. Some grapes known today to be synonyms of other grapes are listed separately, which explains the high number of varieties in the registry. In fairness, it is true that some recent grape variety identifications were startling at best (I still shake my head when reading some new proposed identifications), and were subsequently proven to be erroneous, so this is one time politicians can wiggle off the hook. Still, these inaccuracies in the National Registry only add to the confusion. For example, Sangiovese, Grechetto Rosso, and Prugnolo are listed as separate entities (at numbers 218, 96, and 201 respectively) but they are in fact all Sangiovese, and all supposedly genetically identical. The same might apply to Biancame (number 25) and Trebbiano Toscano (number 244), which some believed to be genetically identical. Cataratto Comune (number 58) and Cataratto Lucido (number 59) are believed genetically the same, but Cataratto Lucido is a higher quality biotype, allowing for better wines. It therefore makes sense to keep the two separate, but for accuracy’s sake there ought to be a provision in the classification indicating that the two seem to be genetically the same grape. A similar scenario plays out with Favorita (number 80), Pigato (number 190), and Vermentino (number 259), where the first two are reportedly just biotypes of the third; but differences between the three wines and the three grapevines are noteworthy enough that an argument can be made for listing the cultivars separately under one heading, specifying supposed genetic identity along with biotype-related differences. Of course, for some people it just doesn’t matter: I know a number of farmers who steadfastly refuse to accept that their Pigato could be someone else’s Vermentino. Though in reading those words you might think Italy really is a never-ending source of amusement, and that if the country hadn’t existed, then someone would surely have invented it, things aren’t quite that cut and dried. I can make a very good case for keeping separate some varieties said to be identical by scientists, and as I will explain in chapter 1, there is scientific method behind my madness.

The Names

More than one wine lover has confessed to feeling hapless in the face of the dizzying array of names of Italy’s seemingly endless list of grape varieties, referring to sizes, shapes, growing characteristics, places of origin (or more exactly, supposed origin), animal names, and a rainbow of colors. According to Hohnerlein-Buchinger, the nomenclature used to name grape varieties was formed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, based on writings by Pliny and other Georgic Latin authors.

The names of Italian native cultivars derive from:

1. A sensory attribute such as color, smell, or taste. Color (of grape or wine) was most used, and popular already in ancient Rome, where grapes called rubellae (red) and cinereae (ashen) were legion. Just a few examples of color-coded grapes of today include Albana (from albanus, white); Bianchetta, Biancone, Bianco (from bianco, also white); Nerello, Nero, Neretto (from nero, black); Rossana, Rossese (from rosso, red); Verdello, Verdicchio, Verduzzo (from verde, green). In other cases, color was simply attached to the grape name: for example, Malvasia Bianca and Greco Bianco. The use of color to name grapes could also be more subtle, referring to a specific hue by its association with a physical state, animal, or fruit. Examples are Piedirosso, Palombina, and Piede di Colombo (all refer to the red legs of pigeons); Corvina and Corvinone (from corvo, raven), Ansonica (from sauro, the color of dry leaves), and my personal favorite, Erbaluce (from alba and luce, or the dawn’s light, which is particularly bright and pale, just like this grape). Other varieties were named because of smell or taste: Mammolo (from viola mammola, a specific type of perfumed violet), Dolcetto (from dolce or douce, sweet, in reference to the sweet grapes, not the wine).

2. Physical attributes, especially of the grape bunch and the berries (such as shape, size, and features of the pulp). Examples include Pignola and Pignolo (from pigna, or pine cone, due to small, compact grape bunches) or Olivella (from oliva, indicating olive-shaped berries).

3. Viticultural behaviors, cultivation methods, productivity levels, and wine characteristics. Examples include Canaiolo (from dies caniculares, the hot dog days of July and August, when the berries change color), Schiava (meaning slave, since the vines were tied to poles, or enslaved), Cataratto (from cataratte or cascate, waterfalls of wine, due to its copious productivity). My favorite is Pulcinculo: a zingy and peppery wine that gives you a kick, and supposedly gets you moving and shaking. Pulcinculo translates to fleas up your rear end.

4. Perceived origin of the varieties. This was perhaps the most important means by which to name grapes in ancient Rome. Examples are Malvasia (from the Greek city of Monenvasia) and Vernaccia (from Vernazza, a town in Liguria, or, alternatively, from vernaculum, meaning local).

5. Names of people, saints, or other religious references. Examples include Santa Maria or Regina (queen).

Unfortunately, aliases-often erroneous ones-have always been plentiful. In Italy, the same name was often used for different varieties in very distant parts of the country, and even within the same region. For example, there are at least three different varieties named Greco Bianco in Calabria alone-and not to be outdone, there are at least five unrelated Greco Neros there as well. These are examples of homonyms, different varieties that have been erroneously attributed the same name. Another well-known example of homonymity is offered by the many unrelated Malvasia grapes found all over the world. Even larger is the problem posed by synonyms, identical varieties known under different names, such as Zibibbo and Moscato di Alessandria, which are one and the same. In Italy, where regionality has always ruled, synonymity can be taken to extremes: for example, Bianchetta Trevigiana has always had numerous and completely different names in various corners of Veneto, its home. Bianchetta is the name historically used for it around Treviso and Belluno; but it’s Senese in the Breganze area, Vernanzina in the Colli Berici, and Vernassina in the Colli Euganei, all localities within an hour’s drive (often less) from each other. Sometimes, there really can be too much of a good thing.

THE VARIETY-SPECIFIC APPROACH TO WINE

In today’s world of terroir-obsessed wine lovers, it might strike the casual reader as curious to think of wines in terms of grape varieties first and foremost. In fact, many producers and winemakers decry the attention that a few (though in my view, not nearly enough) wine writers lavish on the cultivar with which the wine is supposedly made. For them, speaking of wine in terms of variety is too reductive-what counts most in their minds is not Sangiovese, but the Sangiovese of Montalcino or Montepulciano, not Pinot Nero that counts, but Musigny or Corton. The implication is that anyone can grow Sangiovese or Pinot Nero, but only a few blessed individuals in this world have Montalcino or Musigny to work with. This point of view has many merits, but it also has dangers. Undoubtedly, terroir is important: for example, a Riesling grown on slate soils in a cool climate will give a wine very different from one grown on clay in a warmer climate. What is even more fascinating, a Riesling grown in the same cool climate but on soils rich in red instead of blue slate will also give a different wine. Such diversities are the reason for terroir-based appellations such as those of Burgundy or the great rieslings made in different vineyards of the Mosel, whose amazing spectrum of aromas and flavors have historically been recognized by name on German wine labels.

This capacity to translate minute differences of terroir is typical of most grape varieties, though some, like Nebbiolo, Pinot Nero, and Riesling, seem better at it than others. However for most people who drink wine, the differences between wines made from grapes grown in different areas is minimal. Further, some grape varieties, such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, are remarkably capable of reproducing essentially the same wine no matter where they are planted. This is a gross generalization, of course: a Cabernet Franc wine from Napa is different than one from Sonoma, but few wine drinkers can really tell them apart.

Of course, a well-made Piedmontese Nebbiolo will always differ from a well-made Oregonian or Australian example. Though other places in the world might one day make Nebbiolo wines that are the envy of the Piedmontese, they will never be exactly alike, since each will reflect the terroir it comes from. That said, a significant problem with many appellations (in Italy, the United States, France, and everywhere else) is that only a small number produce wines really typical of a finite, well-established production area. This is because most appellations are far too broad, so that there is ultimately no connection between the land and the wine finally produced. Just as the characteristics of wines made in the large Sonoma Coast AVA are hard to pinpoint, even Italians don’t know where DOCs such as Bianco Capena or Riesi are located, or what the wines made there should taste like. Famous DOCs are often particularly nonsensical: for example, there are two thousand hectares from which to make Brunello di Montalcino, a ridiculous figure no matter how you slice it (consider that all of France’s Musigny grand cru is confined to less than eleven hectares). Whatever some people would like you to believe, it is impossible to make appellation-specific wine from an area as large as the one permitted to produce Brunello today, and given the myriad soil types, exposures, and altitudes, it follows that there is not one Brunello, but many different ones. In this case, terroir hardly speaks of one wine: Brunellos made in the northern parts of the Brunello zone are completely different from those made in the southern ones (and those made in the southwestern quadrant are different still from those made in the southeastern section of the zone, and it’s actually a lot more complicated than that). In Alsace, where terroir is all-important, they have similar problems. For example, the famous Brand grand cru was originally three hectares large; today it is fifty hectares, and ought to be subdivided into one grand cru and at least three different premiers crus. I have been tasting Alsatian wines regularly for the past eighteen years and I find it difficult to speak of wines exhibiting a Brand somewhereness, much as with Brunello. In fact, some Brand producers have resorted to bottling wines called Brand K and Brand S, each made from specific subsections of the Brand, the Steinglitz and Kirchberg. In Bordeaux, wines are described as being very Pomerol: but if one Pomerol wine is made with 90 percent Merlot (for example, Château Trotanoy) and the other with 53 percent Cabernet Franc (Château Lafleur) and on quite different soils (mainly clay for Trotanoy and mainly gravel for Lafleur), then it becomes objectively difficult for most people to recognize the two wines as being from Pomerol. However, a knowledgeable wine writer or expert will have no difficulty picking up that one of the two wines is top heavy with Cabernet Franc.

Varietal labeling is also easier to understand than geographic labeling, and many wine lovers like to know how a wine made with a given grape variety is supposed to taste. In fact, that’s probably why they’re buying the wine in the first place. Unfortunately, most wine-producing countries allow varietal labeling that is optimistic at best. While there are truly monovarietal (meaning 100 percent) wines made, Europe has passed legislation requiring that wines labeled with the name of a single grape variety contain at least 85 percent of that variety-and it’s only 75 percent in the United States. This situation may yield short-term political and commercial benefits: farmers and producers are always happy to augment production of wines that sell, and blending in other grapes makes increasing the annual bottle production of a specific monovarietal wine easy, especially if grapevines of that native grape are still rare. But it does nothing to further the cause of the varieties and wines themselves, for a wine including 15 percent of another variety certainly will not taste exclusively of the main variety. The situation is worsened when highly aromatic or strongly flavorful varieties are used in the blend; for this reason there are many legal provisions specifying whether or not aromatic varieties such as Moscato Bianco may be added. It seems to me that producing a Picolit or Verdicchio wine that tastes of Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc is an exercise in futility, for the uniqueness of the grape and wine (and hence one of the reasons why someone might want to buy it) is hopelessly lost.

Colors, Aromas, and Flavors of Native Grapes and Wines

It is the grape variety that (in the absence of enological alchemy) will most dictate the aroma and flavor profile of a wine. I am not alone in believing this. In Vines, Grapes, and Wines, Jancis Robinson wrote that the grape alone determines perhaps 90 percent of the flavor of a wine. In fact, this is intuitive: just as a green apple smells and tastes different from a yellow or a red apple, so do grapes. Taking this one step further, a Northern Spy apple has its own characteristics, different from those of Macintosh, Cortland, or Fuji apples, all of them red. Just as these apples obviously look, taste, and smell different, so do Sangiovese and Aglianico, and their respective wines. Wines are characterized by specific colors, aromas (primary, secondary, and tertiary), and flavors that are related to their grape varieties. Though winemaking and viticultural techniques can have an important effect on the final color, aroma, and flavor of wine, it must never be forgotten that the cultivar’s genetics inevitably determines the wine’s specific characteristics.

Color is a good example: you wouldn’t normally expect pinkish berries to give black wines or vice versa, and you’d be right, more or less. Grape and wine color is due mainly to anthocyanins (anthocyanidins bound to a molecule of glucose), pigments located in the skins and to a lesser extent the pulp; co-pigmentation, the binding of anthocyanins with nonorganic molecules, is also important in the genesis of wine color. The combinations and ratios of the five different free anthocyanins and the presence or absence of stable, conjugated anthocyanin forms, such as acylated and dicumarilic anthocyanins, also dictate wine color. The five anthocyanins are malvin, petunin, delphin, cyanin, and peonin: the first two are most stable, while cyanin and peonin are easily broken down, or oxidized. Hence, wines made with grape varieties rich in these last two pigments tend to have lighter hues and less stable color; knowing that Nebbiolo is particularly rich in cyanin and peonin tells you that Barolo can never be pitch black, and that even super-dark ruby can be a stretch (though admittedly, new biotypes have managed to kick the shade up quite a notch). Same goes for Sangiovese, another variety rich in cyanin; Sangiovese’s pigments have been the subject of extensive studies in recent years, with the goal of using its very characteristic anthocyanin profile as a marker for the variety in wines. Fulvio Mattivi of the Fondazione Edmund Mach, one of Italy’s greatest anthocyanin experts, first described these pigments in depth in 1990, and his group has recently published a major and truly fascinating study detailing Sangiovese’s anthocyanin profile as never before (Arapitsas, Perenzoni, Nicolini, and Mattivi 2012). More importantly, Sangiovese is known to be practically devoid (as Pinot Nero is) of acylated anthocyanins; by contrast, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon are loaded with them (Mangani, Buscioni, Collina, Bocci, and Vincenzini 2011). Hence, a wine supposedly made with 100 percent Sangiovese (or Pinot Nero) that contains more than 1–2 percent acylated anthocyanins is not likely a monovarietal sangiovese or pinot nero. Of course winemaking techniques, climate, and viticultural methods can affect the intensity of a wine’s hue: for example, thicker skins and smaller berries will give darker wines, as do oak-aging, and other techniques. However, there’s a limit to how much color grapes can give before bitter tannins and other phenols leach out and wines taste unbalanced. Historically, specific varieties have been used to increase the color of anemic-looking wines: Italy is rich in teinturiers (coloring varieties) such as Colorino, Granoir, and many others. However, they cannot be added if the wine has