Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
on the vine. Cincinnato has tried air-drying for
three months, but the wine becomes too sweet,
so they prefer late harvests (about twenty days
longer, to gain more concentration). Carpineti
prefers to harvest late only for his
riserva
wines.
Nieddu Mannu, as others had suggested (these
results were published by Nieddu in 2011 in an
extremely well written and interesting topic on
Sardinian varieties, but not yet in a peer-
reviewed journal). That ampelographic recog-
nition of varieties was never easy is demon-
strated by past luminaries such as Vialà and
Vermorel (1909) believing Nieddera to be iden-
tical to Perricone, a completely unrelated Sicil-
ian variety. Contini also told me that in 2010
Vouillamoz, the Swiss researcher who has done
so much for the identifi cation of wine grapes,
had told him about a genetic analysis compar-
ing Nieddera to two thousand grape varieties (a
quarter of them Italian), in which he found that
Nieddera might be identical to Mantilaria (or
Mandilaria), a Greek grape from Rhodes and
Crete. But as the Swiss makes no mention of
this fi nding in the recent
Wine Grapes
topic, I
imagine further testing excluded this possibil-
ity after all. Nieddu, Nieddu, Cocco, Erre, and
Chessa (2007) wrote that Nieddera is closely
related to Nieddu Mannu, which Vouillamoz
believes to be identical to Pascale; therefore,
logically, Nieddera and Pascale would be closely
related too. In reality, and a clear-cut example of
why some study results have to be taken with a
large grain of salt, things are most likely not so
straightforward. I have no doubts that some so-
called Nieddera grapevines on Sardinia are in
fact Nieddu Mannu, while others are probably
Pascale; but the fact is that Nieddera is a com-
monly attributed name to many distinct grape-
vines on the island. In the 2007 study by Nied-
du's group, a number of such similar-looking
but differently named grapevines (Picciolo
Rosso, Primidivu Nieddu, Nera Tomentosa,
Falso Gregu, Nieddu Pedra Serra, and Nieddu
Mannu from the Pattada area; Pascale from the
Padria area; Pascale from the Oliena area;
and Pascale from the Cagliari area) were com-
pared morphologically and by SSR analysis and
found to be identical. So the logical conclusion
is that Pascale and the other varieties analyzed
in this study, such as Nieddu Mannu are all
one and the same, but this conclusion is most
likely applicable only to the specifi c accessions
wines to try:
Cincinnato*** (three bottlings:
Nero Buono, Ercole, and Polluce; the Ercole is
made from a selection of the best grapes, but
the entry-level wine is excellent too, and all are
remarkably inexpensive) and Marco Carpi-
neti** (Os Rosae, a very good
rosato
). The latter
also makes an impressive wine called
Dythirambus, but it's not monovarietal, con-
taining large doses of Montepulciano. Because
Nero Buono is an up-and-coming variety,
expect an increase in such wines (to some
extent, it's already happening). My advice for
wine writers and wine lovers alike is to please
pay attention to the name of the producer for
wines labeled Nero Buono, as not everyone's
heart is in the right place.
Nero d'Avola
See
CALABRESE
.
Nieddera
where it's found:
Sardinia.
national regis-
try code number:
170.
color:
red.
One of the oldest varieties on the island,
Nieddera is thought to have arrived either via
Greek or Phoenician traders or by way of the
almost six hundred years of Spanish domina-
tion. No conclusive evidence exists one way or
the other. Contini, the best producer of Nied-
dera wine, who deserves great credit and every-
one's admiration for essentially saving the vari-
ety from extinction, believes that Nieddera was
already on Sardinia between the eighth and sev-
enth centuries
B
.
C
.
E
. Also called Niedda Vera,
Nieddaera, Nireddie, or Nigra Vera, the grape
was fi rst accurately described by Cettolini
(1897) and Cara (1909). Genetic testing at
twelve SSR loci confi rmed Nieddera as a differ-
ent variety unrelated to the
Bovale
family and to
