Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Prugnolo Gentile in Montepulciano, Nielluccio
on the French island of Corsica, and Toustain
in Algeria. Sangiovese is also correctly but
rarely referred to as Sangiogheto, Sangiovese di
Lamole, Sangiovese Dolce, Sangiovese Gentile,
Sangioveto, Sangioveto Montanino, Sanzoveto,
and Uvetta. Sangiovese Grosso and Sangiovese
Piccolo are names of the cultivar's two main
biotypes, though discussing Sangiovese in
terms of this dual classifi cation is antiquated
and essentially incorrect.
For such an important cultivar, documenta-
tion of Sangiovese's existence is relatively thin
and doesn't go that far back. Sangiovese was
fi rst mentioned by Soderini in his 1590 treatise
on the cultivation of grape varieties; he called it
Sangiogheto and described it as a variety always
capable of yielding quality wines. At the end of
the seventeenth century, it was depicted in a
painting, under the name Sangioeto, by Bar-
tolomeo del Bimbo, nicknamed Il Bimbi, artist
of the Medici court. Trinci (1726) sang the
praises of San Zoveto, known for “grapes of
wonderful quality produced in huge quantities
every year.” Villifranchi also praised the pro-
ductive dependability of San Gioveto in his
Oenologia toscana
(1773) and was probably the
fi rst to begin differentiating between different
Sangiovese types, mentioning a San Gioveto
Forte (for him, synonymous with Inganna
Cane, another variety) and a San Gioveto
Romano cultivated in the Marca, in particular
in the Faentino region. Very interestingly, Vil-
lifranchi mentions that Carmignano, one of the
oldest and most famous Sangiovese-based
wines, was made by including air-dried grapes
of Canaiolo Nero, Aleatico, and Moscadello.
Also in 1773, the existence of Sangiovese wines
from Romagna are mentioned in a text by
Ghini de' Minimi. The Ampelography Com-
mission of Siena (1875-76) listed Sangioveto
among the most widespread grapevines in the
Chianti region, and similarly, Prugnolo in
Montepulciano and Brunello in Montalcino.
Interestingly, the commission asked if Sangio-
veto, Prugnolo, Brunello, and Sangioveto Pic-
colo might not be identical. Di Rovasenda
(1877) mentions a Sangioveto in Tuscany, while
he writes of Sangiovese in Romagna. This is an
important if seldom-used geographic distinc-
tion in nomenclature: because Tuscany's vari-
ety is generally viewed as better quality (per-
haps not actually true), some modern-day
producers and experts would prefer it if every-
one took to referring to Tuscany's Sangiovese as
Sangioveto, limiting the name Sangiovese to
the grapevine grown in Emilia-Romagna and
elsewhere. Paolo Panerai of the famous Castel-
lare estate in Castellina in Chianti certainly
does; and Badia a Coltibuono, another world-
class Chianti Classico producer located in Gai-
ole in Chianti, has named its top wine
Sangioveto.
The existence of different biotypes of San-
giovese became the subject of much study and
discussion in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Molon (1906) wrote that
the two most common types of Sangiovese
were Sangioveto Grosso (also called Sangioveto
Dolce) and the Sangiovese Piccolo (also called
Sangioveto Forte, but this is a mistake: we
know today Sangiovese Forte, or Sanforte, to
be genetically distinct from Sangiovese; see
Sanforte entry). A little later, Breviglieri and
Casini (1964) agreed with Molon's view but
expanded upon it, including still other syno-
nyms: according to them, Sangiovese Grosso
was synonymous with Sangiovese Dolce and
Sangiovese Gentile, while Sangiovese Piccolo
was the same as Sangiovese Forte and Sangio-
vese Montanino.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century
the cultivation of San Gioveto appears to have
been limited to Tuscany and Romagna (in the
provinces of Forlì and Ravenna), interestingly
the opposite slopes of the Apennines that face
the province of Florence on one side and that of
Forlì on the other. Sangiovese does not appear
to have been grown all over Tuscany at that
time (unlike today), and there is apparently no
mention of its presence in southern Italy, where
some recent genetic data suggests the variety
might actually be native to (see below). In addi-
tion to the province of Florence, where it was
