Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
sonally, I prefer the still version and am sorry
he doesn't make it anymore.
another hilarious viewpoint and a lesson on
just how far the concept of “nativeness” can be
stretched—and also absolutely impossible,
since
Vitis vinifera
isn't native to American soil.
Others claimed that Hungarian immigrant
Agoston Haraszthy, who planted more than
three hundred different grape varieties after
arriving in 1837 (and also founded Sonoma's
Buena Vista winery in 1857), was the fi rst to
plant Zinfandel; but this is unlikely, as New
York State nurseries were selling a “zinfendel”
already in the 1820s (Zinfandel's fi nal U.S.
spelling was decided upon only in the 1860s).
Not to be outdone, Italians unleashed their
usual litany of ancient Greek, Roman, and
medieval potential grape origins to claim Prim-
itivo as one of their own (undoubtedly, in the
world of grapes, there are some clear-cut advan-
tages to having been around for thousands of
years). The vexing issue in Italy was really just
trying to decide whether Primitivo was fi rst
brought to Italy by Phoenician traders or by
Illyrian Greek colonists more than two thou-
sand years ago, or if it had been brought to
Gioia del Colle in the seventeenth century by
Benedictine monks from Burgundy (when it
comes to wine, Burgundian ancestry never
hurts). The Burgundy hypothesis is a real
stretch, given the variety's historical seaside
Croatian and Italian homes. The fi rst offi cial
documentation of Primitivo in Puglia dates
back to the seventeenth century, but it appar-
ently wasn't called Primitivo then. What is sure
is that Primitivo rapidly gained a foothold all
over Puglia thanks to the work of Don Fran-
cesco Filippo Indellicati, who was the fi rst to
select vines in old vineyards around Gioia del
Colle and helped propagate them elsewhere. A
priest and amateur botanist, he was the one
who gave the early ripening variety its Latin-
derived name; prior to Indellicati the variety
was known by other names, for example, Zaga-
rese (a likely reference to Zagreb in Croatia), and
other varieties elsewhere in Italy were similarly
named. The Primitivo vines arrived in 1799-
1800 in Manduria (the cultivar's other famous
Puglian home) from Gioia del Colle, thanks to
wines to try:
Grosjean** and the sparkling
version by Les Cretes** (Neblù, made initially
as a collaboration between Les Crêtes and IAR).
Didier Gerbelle** has resurrected the tech-
nique of air-drying Prëmetta and produced a
fi rst vintage in 2013.
Primitivo
where it's found:
Puglia, Campania.
national
registry code number:
199.
color:
red.
This variety is called Primitivo in Italy
because it ripens very early in the season (and
not because of primitive or rustic-tasting wines,
a mistaken though understandable assumption
given some truly horrible bottlings over the
years). The name Primitivo derives from the
Latin
primativus
and the Italian
primaticcio
(both meaning fi rst to ripen, or early ripening).
In fact, all of this variety's phenological steps,
from fl owering to color change, are precocious.
Hence, it is one of the fi rst grapes to be picked
in Italy: in Puglia, its main Italian home, this
means August (unless the producer wants to
make a late-harvest-style wine).
There have been fewer longer-lasting
debates in the world of wine concerning a
grapevine's provenance than those involving
Primitivo. For the cultivar is a friendly grape
doppelgänger, grown in several countries:
today, most everyone agrees that Italy's Primi-
tivo, California's Zinfandel, and Croatia's
Crljenak Kastelianski (and you thought Italian
names were tough to pronounce) or more accu-
rately, Tribidrag, are one and the same. Accept-
ing this hasn't been easy for anyone involved. I
remember only too well the anger (I'm not
exaggerating in using that word) and unwill-
ingness of some Puglian growers and produc-
ers (even famous ones) to accept the Zinfandel
name as recently as the late 1990s. Of course,
some in the United States have long insisted
that Zinfandel is a native American species,
