Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
nothing more than anecdotal evidence) of the
variety's existence on Sardinian soil since the
dawn of time. And not only with Cannonau,
but with Vermentino as well, and many other
grapes (not just in Sardinia), and so it becomes
harder to separate fact from fi ction. Second,
Cannonau allows an opportunity to think
about what “identical” really means in ampelo-
logical terms, a subject that fascinates me (see
chapter 1).
Calò, Costacurta, Cancellier, and Forti
(1990) fi rst confi rmed that Cannonau is identi-
cal to Grenache (Spain's Garnacha, a name
deriving from the Italian
Vernaccia
), the world's
most abundantly planted high-quality grape, to
Sicily's and Tuscany's Alicante (not to be con-
fused with Alicante Bouschet, a different group
of varieties), Umbria's Gamay Perugino, and
Veneto's Tocai Rosso. However, more recent
studies have provided contradictory fi ndings
(De Mattia, Lovicu, Tardaguila, Grassi, Imazio,
Scienza, and Labra 2009; Meneghetti, Costa-
curta, Frare, Da Rold, Migliaro, Morreale, et al.
2011). Identifi cation of Garnacha and its syno-
nyms is diffi cult because of the vast ampelo-
graphic variability (such as differences in berry
color) found in many similarly named grape-
vines (Cabezas, Cervera, Arroyo-García,
Ibáñez, Rodríguez-Torres, Borrego, et al. 2003).
The previously mentioned 2009 study by De
Mattia's team suggested that the Spanish
Gar-
nacha
group consists of cultivars displaying dif-
ferent morphologies and genetics because of
somatic mutations or crossings between grape-
vines over centuries. Cannonau grapevines
grown in Sardinia and in other parts of Italy
also show great ampelographic diversity. It fol-
lows that the relationship between Garnacha
and Cannonau grapevines depends greatly on
the specific accessions being analyzed.
Meneghetti's team demonstrated that fi fty-
three accessions of Garnacha from Spain, Ali-
cante from Sicily, Tocai Rosso from Veneto,
Cannonau from Sardinia, and Gamay Perugino
from Umbria all had the same genetic profi le
(fourteen SSR sites studied), but data collected
by De Mattia, Imazio, Grassi, Lovicu, Tar-
daguila, Failla, et al. (2007) does not allow the
same conclusion. While this group's results
suggest that the four Cannonau varieties (col-
lected at different sites in Sardinia) were geneti-
cally identical, only some Spanish accessions of
Garnacha Tinta (also from different areas of
Spain) showed the same SSR profi le as the
Cannonau in the study. Therefore, we can con-
clude that while these results confi rm that Can-
nonau and several Spanish accessions of Gar-
nacha Tinta are identical, at the same time not
all Garnacha Tinta cultivars have the same
genetic makeup as Cannonau.
Actually, ampelographers fi rst began to
identify the two varieties as synonymous in
1877 due to obvious ampelographic similari-
ties. The name Cannonau is considered a defor-
mation of the Spanish Canoñazo; it first
appears as Canonat in notary acts of the six-
teenth century. Manca dell'Arca (1780)
describes both a white- and a red-berried Can-
nonau
:
curiously, he believed the red one to be
mediocre. In contrast, Moris (1837) believed it
excellent, and synonymous with
Vitis praestans.
Furthermore, in the seventeenth century, Sar-
dinians took to calling it Guarnaccia or Granac-
cia, names still used today in other Italian
regions where the variety grows. It seems likely
that Cannonau fi rst arrived on Sardinian shores
with the conquest of the island town of Alghero
by Peter IV of Aragon in 1354. A rare white-
berried Cannonau Bianco has also been
described (just as there are a Grenache Blanc
and Garnacha Blanca), which means it would
be more accurate to refer to the red-berried vari-
eties as Cannonau Nero, Grenache Noir, and
Garnacha Tinta. For simplicity's sake, I will
reserve and use the shorter name for the red-
berried varieties, which are much more com-
mon than the white-colored ones.
However, while few still dispute that Gar-
nacha is (more or less) identical to Cannonau,
the variety's birthplace is still a matter of heated
debate. The presumed Spanish origin of Can-
nonau has been recently questioned by Italian
experts such as Lovicu (2006), though written
references to Garnacha (Grenache) and Can-
