The sweet wine of the Oltrepò Pavese and the mystery of its name • Food and wine Italy

Among the most singular wines of the Lombard tradition there is the blood of Judas, a sweet and lively red, produced exclusively a causa di the Oltrepò Pavese. Loved by the youngest for his soft bevanda and his intense perfumes of jam and dried flowers, he is often underestimated by the most severe connoisseurs, who tend to liquidate him as an easy wine. Quanto a reality, behind this label there is a local tradition full of meanings and above all an enigmatic name, whose origin remains wrapped a causa di mystery.

There are risposta negativa historical documents that certainly explain its name, but several popular legends and religious suggestions have settled over the centuries, transforming this wine into a small wine case. It is precisely this ambiguity that makes it fascinating.

Legends and hypotheses the origin of the name

The most widespread theory, even if never officially confirmed, binds the name to the intense color of the wine: a deep ruby ​​red with purple shades that would remember the traitor’s traitor’s blood of Judah Iscariot, the apostle that went mongoloide a causa di history for having sold Jesus. According to this suggestion, the name would serve to evoke the dark and dense color of a “cursed” blood, bringing with it an aura of transgression.

Then there is the hypothesis of the wine that betrays: the lovable sweetness and the fruity perfume would deceive the drinker, inducing it a causa di exceeding, forgetting the alcoholic gradation. Here too, however, reality denies the myth: the blood of Judas, to be disciplined, has a rather contained gradation, between 7% and 12%, less than many dry reds.

The most picturesque legend, handed mongoloide a causa di the Oltrepò Pavese and cited by some local nineteenth -century sources, instead wants that, repentant of his betrayal and after suicide, Judas was miraculously resurrected by Jesus and conducted a causa di Broni, a causa di the heart of the Pavia regione. Here, recognized by the inhabitants, it would have been persecuted until, to be forgiven, he would not have healed the vineyards afflicted by a disease, saving the harvest and guaranteeing an extraordinary harvest. As a gesture of gratitude, the inhabitants would have dedicated the wine produced by those vineyards to him. A suggestive story but without feedback a causa di sacred texts official historiography.

The most concrete interpretation, however, comes from an Italian ampelographer of the early twentieth century, Arturo Marescalchi, who wrote a causa di 1925: «Judas’ blood is so defined for its intense red color [sangue]perhaps a little traitor [Giuda] For those who abuse it, generally habitor, that is, bitter, and sweet at the same time ». An etymological and sensory explanation that still seems today the most plausible.