TUSCAN SANGIOVESE? NO, ITS CALABRIAN. THE GENIUS LOCI ASSOCIATION OF EUROPEAN WINEMAKERS IS BORN

Incredible but true: Calabria, not Tuscany, was the first to have witnessed the dawning of one of the most celebrated indigenous Italian grapes, Sangiovese. To put things short, even in Brunello there’s a bit of Calabria. The most famous vines in the world, also well known for their supposed Tuscan roots, actually appear to have descended from a Calabrian grape variety, cultivated in the past near Campania in the province of Salerno. This is the most interesting curiosity in the relation published by José Vouillamoz at the University of Neuchatel (course on European grape varietals) presented during the inauguration of Genius Loci, an association made up of a series of European wine producers and with the goal of proposing wines that are strongly linked to their territories and with a typicality to render them unique and available only in their areas of origin.

Sangiovese would in fact be - according to the University of Neuchatel scholar - the offspring of two antique indigenous grape varieties, the Tuscan Ciliegiolo and the Calabrian Montenuovo. The study by Vouillamoz has also brought to light the importance of the indigenous European grape Eiren, which is the most cultivated vine in the world, covering over 430,000 hectares.

Confirming the news of the Calabrian origins of the Sangiovese is the head of the Environment and Territory sector of the national agricultural organization Coldiretti, Stefan Masini: “We have discovered - he stated in reference to Vouillamoz’s study - that it is not Tuscan but Calabrian. This is an important piece of news for wine experts and for this sector”.

The essence of Genius Loci, explained Andrea Surbone, association coordinator, “is to present a united series of wines that can be accessed by consumers only in the regions which they are an expression of”. A bottle of wine, in fact - according to Surbone - no matter how excellent it is cannot ever be exhaustive on its own; full understanding can only come by treading on the land where it was produced, by watching the faces of those who live there, appreciating the light, the morphology, human intervention, from the hillside farms in that specific region. “The association’s goal becomes, therefore - concluded Surbone - not only the presentation of a wine, but also of the territory that the wine is an expression of. It is an association, rather than of producers, between wines that also have a touristic and cultural value. This, therefore, is our goal: to offer connoisseurs, each with their own ambitions but united in their proposal, a wine and its genius loci”.