Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
considered an excellent table grape. Its name
derives from the Italian words
prima
or
prima-
ticcia,
meaning “before” or “early,” referring to
the grape's early ripening (the same applies to
Primitivo and other similarly named
varieties).
In observance of the guidelines expressed
by the International Council for the Nomencla-
ture of Cultivated Plants (Brickell, Baum, Het-
terscheid, Leslie, McNeill, Trehane, Vrugtman,
and Wiersema 2004), the correct name should
be Primetta, for that is how this grape was
originally known in the nineteenth century.
According to Gatta (1838), it was then grown
mainly in north-exposed vineyards and was
also called Neblou or Prié Rouzo, the latter
becoming Prié Rouge in French. Both Prié
Rouge and Prëmetta are in fact twentieth-cen-
tury creations: Prié Rouge was coined because
Primetta is the result of a natural crossing
between Prié Blanc and an unknown other par-
ent. Actually, Berget (1904) had already noted
the ampelographic similarities between Prié
Blanc and Primetta and wrote that the latter
was most likely a subvariety of the former (in
fact, though related, the two are distinct varie-
ties). As Prié Rouge is also the offi cial name
listed in the National Registry for this cultivar,
that's an argument for using it in this topic too.
However, the name you are most likely to come
across is Prëmetta, and it's also the name I use
for the variety. In the last twelve or thirteen
years of annual visits to the Valle d'Aosta, I have
yet to meet a producer or local wine lover who
has once, and I mean just once, referred to this
cultivar as Prié Rouge.
Though rare today, in 1877 Prëmetta repre-
sented 40 percent of the grapes grown around
Charvensod and Saint-Nicolas and 30 percent
of the those around Jovençan. Costantino
Charrère, who was the first to believe in
Prëmetta and began growing it in 1972, loves
the variety, and though he realizes it's not the
noblest grape he'll ever work with, he loves its
many qualities and is pushing younger wine
producers around him to give it a try. Like
Charrère, I think Prëmetta is a very pretty
grape. The large, pyramidal, winged bunches
have medium-sized round berries of a lovely
dark pink but with thin skins. Interestingly, it
appears that Didier Gerbelle, a talented local
vigneron,
has identifi ed a biotype of this culti-
var that yields darker wines and is currently
studying it. Today Prëmetta is fairly rare,
located in a few hectares mainly around Saint-
Pierre, Aymavilles, Saint-Denis, and Quart. It
is very productive and mercifully early ripen-
ing, given the alpine climate it lives in. Fortu-
nately, it tolerates cold weather well, and vines
have been planted as high as eight hundred
meters above sea level.
Which Wines to Choose and Why
Valle d'Aosta DOC Prëmetta is the wine to look
for; it can be monovarietal, though usually 10
percent is made up of other local varieties. The
wine is dark pink with garnet-amber tinges.
The scent is intense, with aromas and fl avors of
roses, red currants, and herbally strawberries,
with light tannins. It is a red wine that looks
like a rosé and tastes like one too. Costantino
Charrère of Les Cretes has recently decided to
make a sparkling wine with Primetta: “I always
felt that, more than any other of our native vari-
eties, Prëmetta has a very unique aromatic and
fl avor expression; so I asked the Institut Agri-
cole Régional to help make a sparkling wine by
conducting the secondary fermentation in the
bottle, much like in Champagne.” This is an
interesting if strange choice, I might add, given
the variety's naturally low acidity. “That's why
it's such a pleasantly creamy sparkling wine,”
explains Charrère. His daughter Eleonora, who
is slowly taking over the day-to-day running of
the estate, adds, “Like all experiments, we've
tinkered with it over the years, harvesting ear-
lier to preserve acidity and adding small per-
centages of Pinot Nero to obtain a more stable
color.” Bich (1896) documents that Primetta
was used to make
vins de paille
(in which the
grapes were air-dried to make luxurious, even
sweet wines), though nobody has, until now,
thought of resurrecting that technique. Char-
rère fi rst made a sparkling wine in 2005; per-
