Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
fi fteen to eighteen months in oak barrels. Both
dry and sweet wines are made with Malbo Gen-
tile. A late ripener (late September or most
often early October), it's blessed with thick
skins and so is suited to air-drying and sweet
wine production, a local tradition. “Picking the
grapes late and then hanging them to dry
rather than laying them on straw mats or plas-
tic shelves is even better,” says Tura. “But it's a
technique that takes up too much space. It's
usually air-dried for twenty-fi ve to thirty days.”
Nowadays, with dry wines being in vogue, pro-
ducers have turned to harvesting Malbo Gen-
tile earlier, so as to make dry red wines.
Soderini in 1600 to Di Rovasenda in 1877.
Actually, those luminaries described various
Mammolo
s, which are not easy to fi nd in con-
temporary vineyards (and I have gone looking
over the years). Even when I have found them,
the amount of time producers spent talking
about the likes of Mammolo Grosso, Mammolo
Asciutto, Mammolo Tondo, or the many other
anciently described
Mammolo
s (Rosso, Serrato,
and a few more I am surely forgetting) was
measurable in nano- or femtoseconds. In fact,
Cipriani, Spadotto, Jurman, Di Gaspero, Cres-
pan, Meneghetti, et al. (2010) point out that
there are fi ve genetically distinct varieties called
Mammolo in the literature, and so it appears
the
Mammolo
s are best viewed as a group of
grapes, rather than one single variety. All of the
other various
Mammolo
s described are likely
just biotypes of one or two main
Mammolo
vari-
eties; today it is widely believed that all others
descend from Mammolo Nero and Mammolone
di Lucca. Since Mammolo is an ancient variety,
it is only reasonable to expect it to have many
biotypes, as well as genetic ties with numerous
other Tuscan varieties. Di Vecchi Staraz,
Bandinelli, Boselli, This, Boursiquot, Laucou,
Lacombe, and Varès (2007) showed that it
is related to Biancone, Caloria, Colombana
Nera, and Pollera Nera, plus two Corsican vari-
eties, Sciaccarellu (or Sciaccarello in Italian)
and Malvasia Montanaccio. It is likely that
Mammolo was brought to Corsica during the
island's Italian days, when it was ruled fi rst by
the powerful Repubbliche Marinare of Pisa and
then by Genoa, from the eleventh through
eighteenth centuries. Very interestingly, the
study by the Cipriani group showed that
Moscato Violetto (also known as Muscat Rouge
de Madeire) is a natural crossing of Moscato
Bianco and Duraguzza, a little-known variety.
However, the 2007 Di Vecchi Staraz group's
study found that Duraguzza was synonymous
with Mammolo; this is especially noteworthy
because their data also shows that Ciliegiolo,
another important Tuscan cultivar, is the off-
spring of Moscato Violetto and Sangiovese.
Therefore, Mammolo would be a grandparent
wines to try:
Vigne dei Boschi** (Borgo Sti-
gnani; the Settepievi is not monovarietal),
Casali Viticoltori** (Sanmartein, a
novello
wine,
and the Passito Passione di Rosa), Istituto di
Stato per l'Agricoltura e l'Ambiente-Persolino**
(L'Amabile Persolino, the best wine made by
this research station), La Piccola** (Mitis, air-
dried and sweet), Bonluigi** (Bucamante, a dry
red; Apice Rosso, a late-harvest selection of the
best grapes; and La Pinona, a
passito
), and Reg-
giana* (Vigna dei Gelsi, a sparkling wine).
Malvasia
s
See
MALVASIA
GROUP
, chapter 3.
Mammolo
where it's found:
Tu sc a ny.
national regis-
try code number:
142.
color:
red.
Nomen omen,
the ancient Romans used to
say, or “truth lies within the name.” So it is with
this smile-inducing grape variety (every time I
see Mammolo's stocky, almost fat bunch with
its big, round juicy berries I think it looks like
one happy grape), which takes its name from
the fl ower
viola mammola,
or violet. No other
red wine I know of, made from any other culti-
var, exudes aromas that are so intensely violet
and so instantly recognizable.
Mammolo is a Tuscan native, historically
described only by Tuscan researchers, from
