Major Native and Traditional Grape Varieties - Native Wine Grapes of Italy - page 383

normal grape bunch has one hundred to two
hundred berries; a classic Picolit has fi fteen or
less). This condition is the result of fl oral abor-
tion, due to partial sterility of the male pollen,
resulting in incomplete fecundation of the
fl ower. Few berries are formed, and so sorry-
looking grape bunches are the variety's distin-
guishing morphologic feature. Of course, oth-
ers in Italy have different opinions (don't they
always), believing that Picolit does not mean
small, but instead evolved from pecol, then to
peculita, and fi nally to piculit, all meaning
“summit of a hill”; this is reasonable enough,
since Picolit is a variety that craves sunlight and
performs best in slightly warmer microcli-
mates. That the imagination of grape histori-
ans and ampelographers knows no bounds
(perhaps fueled by too much study of the mat-
ter) is illustrated by the hypothesis that Picolit's
name descends from the French grape Pique-
poul, which later evolved in the Picpul and
fi nally Piculi grapes (the two are completely
unrelated). Though the exact origins of Picolit
are unknown, its male sterility suggests that it
may derive from domestication of local wild
vines (there is no proof of this). As there is no
documentation to the best of my knowledge of
a similar variety grown outside Friuli Venezia
Giulia prior to records of its appearance in Italy,
this hypothesis is not illogical. There is little
doubt that Picolit is a true native grape of Italy.
I think Picolit is a really pretty grape:
ampelographically, it has very small, conical-
cylindrical, loosely packed bunches and small,
round-oval, bright yellow berries, so translu-
cent you can see through them and count the
pips. However, as Picolit is an extremely ancient
variety, it has much intravarietal variability that
has gone largely unnoticed, probably due to the
variety once being extremely scarce. There are
Picolit s with a green stalk and bright yellow
berries, a red stalk and smaller berries, or with
a blood-red stalk, all described by Pietro di
Maniago in 1823. According to Andrea Felluga
of the Livio Felluga winery, the best of these is
the red-stalked biotype, while the big-bunched
biotypes are more recent arrivals, specifi cally

selected in the 1980s when Picolit grappa was
all the rage (and a lot of pomace was needed).
Paolo Rodaro makes his Picolit wine using a
local biotype selected from 150-year-old
ungrafted vines. In Slovenia, two different
Picolit s are described—Pikolit Vienna and
Pikolit Italia—but ˇ tajner, Korosec-Koruzam,
Ruzjan, and Javornik (2008) showed them to
be identical. Clones available in Italy include
ISV Conegliano 1, ISV-F4, and ISV-F6, but their
quality is suspect, having been created mainly
with increased productivity in mind (which
explains the Picolit grapevines with bunches
reminiscent more of fat turkeys than the origi-
nal Picolit). Picolit is unrelated to Piculit Neri,
another similarly named Friuli Venezia Giulia
variety (the two are not color mutations, and the
spelling of the cultivar names is also different).
Picolit is characterized by strong vigor but
unfortunately pushes vegetative growth (shoots
especially) rather than grape production, which
is extremely low. It's very sensitive to perono-
spora and even more to oidium. And though
Picolit craves sunlight, it doesn't perform well
in excessively hot areas that lack ventilation.
Picolit is grown mainly, if not only, in the
countryside around Udine and Gorizia in Friuli
Venezia Giulia. It is also grown in small
amounts in Slovenia (where it's called Pikolit)
and even Australia (in King Valley, where Piz-
zini makes wines from it, and in Mudgee,
where di Lusso makes the only other monovari-
etal Australian Picolit). Curiously, though I
know of no Picolit grown or made in the United
States, there is a street named Picolit Court in
Fairfi eld, Connecticut.

Which Wines to Choose and Why
Picolit wines are all labeled DOCG Picolit. It is
a delicately sweet wine, though the variety is
also used in dry white wine blends such as Col-
lio Bianco and Rosazzo Bianco to increase the
sweetness and honeyed texture of those wines.
The majority of Picolit wines are made from
air-dried grapes (late-harvest wines were once
more common, though the vagaries of Friuli
Venezia Giulia weather always posed a risk),