Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the most complex you'll ever taste, but they are
a welcome change from the tried and true.
the state-of-the-art method for grape variety
identifi cation, as reproducibility among differ-
ent laboratories is often poor. However, it is also
noteworthy that there is very little historical
documentation of Becuet's presence in Italy,
while Persan has been described in France
since the seventeenth century (Gros 1930).
According to Rézeau (1997), the fi rst to men-
tion Persan was Albin Gras in 1846, then secre-
tary of the Statistical Society of Isère and a
board member for the Agricultural Society of
Grenoble. Gras documented the existence of
Persan vines in the countryside of the Isère
(further specifying that the name Persan was
used locally only on the left bank of the Isère
River, while on the right bank farmers mistak-
enly called it Etraire, which is a different, pos-
sibly related, variety). Tochon in 1868 also
wrote that Persan was one of the most culti-
vated grapes in France's Savoie region. The
absence of similarly detailed documentation of
Becuet's presence in Italy makes it more than
likely that it was fi rst brought over to Piedmont
from France; hence, Becuet is more correctly
viewed as a traditional rather than a native
grape of Italy. However, Frankie Thonet of the
Casa Ronsil estate in Chiomonte is uncon-
vinced, and argues that Persan is most likely
only a “very distant cousin of Becuet,” or at least
a very different biotype, and perhaps even a dif-
ferent variety. According to him, the only phe-
notypic trait the two cultivars share is the shape
of the berries, while leaves and other ampelo-
graphic characteristics are markedly different.
Though you won't fi nd it anywhere else in
Italy, fi nding Becuet is easy when you arrive in
its native part of Piedmont, a mountainous
cool-weather zone east of Turin that hugs the
border with France. The berry is oval and fairly
small, explaining why this variety is also
humorously called Berla 'd Crava Cita, which in
Piedmontese dialect means “in the shape of
goat's dung.” Becuet, though sensitive to oid-
ium and peronospora, is generally a resistant
and very vigorous variety, and seems to grow
better on Paulsen rootstocks, which help the
vines handle drought. It was crossed with
wines to try:
Cima** (Massaretta) and Man-
nucci Droandi* (Barsaglina). Mocine is grow-
ing quite a bit of Barsaglina but currently pre-
fers to blend 20-40 percent Barsaglina into its
only two wine blends, Ottorintocchi and Mo-
cine Rosso. Podere Scurtarola makes a Scur-
tarola Rosso blend that contains 15 percent
Barsaglina.
Becuet
where it's found:
Piedmont.
national reg-
istry code number:
373.
color:
red.
When I fi rst visited the area where Becuet
(rarely spelled Becuèt, Becuét, or Biquét)
grows, years ago, I learned what animals at the
zoo feel like, with everyone gazing at them.
Becuet is hardly one of Italy's better-known cul-
tivars, and when I arrived, there obviously
hadn't been too many grape variety-watchers
(or wine journalists, for that matter) visiting
the area in recent times. People were tickled
pink that a wine writer from Rome was visiting
asking questions about rootstocks, wanting to
taste from barrels, and trying even the older
vintages. In this very remote, bucolic, and
folksy part of northern Italy, all I needed was a
DeLorean and a fl ux capacitor and I would have
been ready for a Michael J. Fox turn in my very
own
Back to the Future.
According to Schneider, Carrà, Akkak, This,
Laucou, and Botta (2001), Becuet is identical to
the French grape Persan from
princens,
a com-
bination of
prim,
meaning prime, and
cens,
meaning fee, in reference to the high value of
Princens vineyard land and to the fact the vari-
ety was once believed to make the best wines of
the Savoy. Not surprisingly, some in Italy beg to
disagree. In fact, though the study used molec-
ular markers to analyze the grape varieties, the
synonymity between Persan and Becuet was
confi rmed only by RAPD analysis; SSR profi l-
ing in the study was not applied to these two
cultivars, and RAPD is no longer considered
