Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
is not the only complicated aspect of Cornalin.
The fi rst written documentation of Cornalin's
existence in Valle d'Aosta is by Lorenzo Fran-
cesco Gatta, the father of Valle d'Aosta ampelol-
ogy. In his seminal 1838
Essay on the Vines and
Wines of the Valle d'Aosta,
he describes (with
remarkable accuracy and detail) all of the
region's native grape varieties and mentions
both a Corniola and a Cornalin variety. Though
his descriptions of the two share obvious
ampelographic similarities, Gatta describes the
former as one of the three most-cultivated vari-
eties in the central part of the region (where
most of Valle d'Aosta's viticulture has always
been concentrated); he states that the latter is
rare. However, thanks to recent work done by
Moriondo (1999), we know that Cornalin and
Corniola are in fact identical. Therefore, it
appears that in the eighteenth century Corna-
lin was a very common cultivar in Valle d'Aosta.
This changed in the nineteenth century, when
all ampelographers, from Tibaldi (1886) to
Louis Napoléon Bich (1896), record a huge
reduction in both Cornalin and Corniola culti-
vation. By the time the twentieth century rolled
around, Cornalin had been reduced to only a
few sporadic vines and risked extinction.
Ironically, what probably saved it was its
strong phenotypic resemblance to Petit Rouge,
another highly productive local variety, with
which it was interplanted. When nursery peo-
ple had to collect vines for reproduction and
propagation of Petit Rouge, many Cornalin
grapevines were selected by mistake. In so
doing, farmers and nursery personnel effec-
tively ensured Cornalin's survival. Some farm-
ers also continued to look after their old vines
of Corniola, while others in the towns of
Aymavilles, Jovençan, and Gressan cultivated
Broblanc (a biotype of Cornalin), a variety they
realized was different from Petit Rouge. The
name Broblanc means white stalk in the local
patois language, as Broblanc and Cornalin have
this in common at the time of winter pruning;
in this respect it is noteworthy that cornelian
cherrywood is reddish on the outside but sandy-
brown on the inside.
Why Cornalin's cultivation diminished so
abruptly in a short period of time is not clear,
for all the existing documentation attests that it
gave wines of the highest quality. Furthermore,
unlike Petit Rouge, it doesn't suffer sunburn,
accumulates high levels of sugar, and yields
reliably every year. Perhaps it was for these rea-
sons that at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, Cornalin was exported to the Swiss Valais,
where the wine quickly earned a good reputa-
tion. In Switzerland, Cornalin was renamed
Humagne Rouge (nobody knows why, as the
only Humagne is a white grape that looks noth-
ing like Cornalin—the irony is that with Hu-
magne Rouge making a name for itself, the
authentic Humagne variety had to be renamed
Humagne Blanc). Gotten a headache yet? Wait,
it gets much better. In 1972, Nicollier, an emi-
nent Swiss ampelographer, wrote a paper in
which he lobbied to have the name of the local
Swiss cultivar Rouge du Pays (or Rouge du Va-
lais) changed to the much better-sounding Cor-
nalin, a variety he and others believed to be
extinct. Nicollier's idea must have been well
received, since today there are 128 hectares of
so-called Cornalin (formerly Rouge du Pays) in
the Valais, which are more than the ten or so
(though the count is rapidly growing) hectares
of the real Cornalin in Valle d'Aosta (2010
data).
To simplify matters, Vouillamoz, Maigre,
and Meredith proposed in 2003 that the Corna-
lin of Valle d'Aosta be renamed Cornalin
d'Aoste, and the Swiss Cornalin impostor
renamed Cornalin du Valais. This seems sensi-
ble, but unfortunately clashes with the Interna-
tional Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated
Plants (ICNCP), which decrees that varieties be
named in order of precedence. The result is that
the Cornalin of Valle d'Aosta is to be named
Cornalin
tout court,
while Cornalin du Valais
has to revert back to its original name, Rouge
du Pays. Ampelographic and isoenzymatic tests
(Moriondo 1999) and DNA testing (Labra,
Imazio, Grassi, Rossoni, Citterio, Sgorbati, Sci-
enza, and Failla 2002; Vouillamoz, Maigre, and
Meredith 2003) have confi rmed the identity
