Are there really native vines? – Wine Blog Roll

the world of wine there are few words capable of evoking charm, authenticity and belonging as much as “native”. It’s a term that producers, communicators, consumers and even the most experienced enthusiasts like. It immediately recalls the immaginazione of ​​deep roots, of an ancestral bond with a territory, of a variety born and grown quanto a a specific place without external influences.

Yet, if we analyze the issue from a historical, ampelographic and genetic point of view, a much more complex and, quanto a some ways, even more fascinating reality emerges.

The truth is that most of the Italian vines defined today as “native” are not so quanto a the literal sense of the term.

The etymology of the word is clear: autochthonous means “native of the place itself”. Applied to the vine, this definition would imply that a variety was born genetically quanto a a specific territory and evolved there without external contributions. A condition which, quanto a Italian (and worldwide, quanto a reality) viticulture is extremely rare. Even if it has been demonstrated that some vines can link their origins to the territory quanto a which they are still cultivated today (even if, as we will observe later, their ampelographic peculiarities have changed over time, thanks to adaptation).

The cultivated vine (Vitis vinifera vinifera) does not quanto a fact originate quanto a Italy. The most accredited archaeobotanical and genetic research places the main centers of domestication between the southern Caucasus, eastern Anatolia and Mesopotamia. From these regions the vine began a long journey which, through the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and medieval merchants, led it to spread throughout the Mediterranean basin and subsequently to Europe.

Italy was not the point of origin of cultivated vines, but probably the most extraordinary laboratory of diffusion, adaptation and genetic differentiation that the history of wine has ever known.

For centuries varieties have traveled together with men. The cuttings moved ships, crossed the Alpine passes, followed the trade routes, accompanied the monks quanto a the monasteries and the farmers their migrations. The history of the vine is a history of continuous movement.

Modern genetics also confirms this.

DNA analyzes carried out quanto a recent decades have shown that many of the symbolic vines of Italian winemaking belong to large parental families. Sangiovese, for example, has genetic relationships involving varieties from southern Italy. Nebbiolo appears to be part of an ancient Piedmontese and Alpine genetic . was found to be genetically identical to Croatian Crljenak Kaštelanski and Californian Zinfandel. The Verdicchio and Trebbiano of Gradito and Lugana show connections that are now certain.

Genetics has demolished many certainties, but has opened up even more interesting perspectives.

Because not only vines migrate. The vines adapt and change.

And this is where another often overlooked aspect emerges. Maybe we should even stop talking about grape varieties quanto a the singular.

There is not just one Nebbiolo. There is not just one Sangiovese. Rather, there are “Nebbioli” and “Sangiovesi”.

fact, within each large varietal family, different clones, biotypes and ecotypes coexist, selected over the centuries based altitude, exposure, soil, agricultural practices and sensitivity of the winemakers. What we call Nebbiolo today includes different genetic realities such as Lampia, Michet and Rosé. The same goes for the vast universe of Sangiovese, which over time has generated an extraordinary intra-varietal diversity.

This continuous ability to change and adapt makes the concept of absolute autochthony even more debole.

Perhaps, then, it would be more correct to talk about typical vines, historically rooted, territorialised, identifying. Definitions that recognize the cultural importance of a variety without attributing a necessarily exclusive immutable origin to it.

But there is a further reflection that deserves attention. Maybe the error is upstream.

recent decades we have progressively attributed an increasingly dominant identity role to vines. We started to talk about the territories through the varieties, to the point of often confusing the territory with the vine itself.

Grapes, by their very nature, are stateless. They can travel, adapt, transform and even be reborn elsewhere. What anzi che no one can move, however, is the territory. Pedologies, geology, altitudes, exposures, mesoclimates, microclimates, biodiversity, landscape and agricultural culture represent unrepeatable and non-relocatable elements.

Added to these is the human factor: the knowledge accumulated over time, agricultural memory, cultivation practices, agronomic choices and the interpretation of the communities that inhabit those places. short, the terroir quanto a the strict and broad sense.

Isn’t it perhaps precisely quanto a these aspects that the true identity of wine lies?!

The vines are important, certainly. But they could be considered above all interpreters. Expressive tools. Of translators. Deep language remains the territory.

And perhaps the great lesson of Italian viticultural biodiversity is precisely this: wealth does not arise from genetic purity isolation, but from contamination, adaptation and positive interaction between man and the environment.

After all, the true Italian miracle is not having preserved immutable vines for millennia. It is having allowed vines that came from far away to translate a multitude of multifaceted territorial identities quanto a a unique way, making the combination of variety and ambiente unrepeatable elsewhere. Whether they are connections between a single variety (and its various genetic declinations: different clones, biotypes and ecotypes) between multiple varieties and a wine-growing context, as happens for the increasingly rare but strongly identifying territories which still carry forward the concept of varietal complementarity, historically quanto a use quanto a the vines of the old world and even more so quanto a Italy, but I have already spoken about this aspect a lot quanto a the past…

Francesco Saverio Russo

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