The first winemaker I met on this tour of Romagna, Mauro Altini, uses the Charmat method and stainless-steel or glass-lined cement tanks to preserve the grape’s aroma and its fruit flavours. The aim being to add some complexity to this soft, elegant, moderately acidic, medium-bodied wine. As it offers so much on the nose, the winemakers are also experimenting to make sure the wine also delivers in the mouth. This starts in the vineyard by reducing yield with green harvesting and continues in the winery with lengthy periods of bâtonnage. The main reason for the experimentation seems to be to either enhance or tame the grape’s distinctive sweet floral and exotic fruit aromas – linden flowers, hawthorn and orange blossoms mingled with banana, peach, green apple and apricot. Most of them live within 20 km of each other, and all are growing the same clone. These variations are expected in large regions with well-known varieties, but there are fewer than 10 serious Famoso producers, none of whom has more than 2 ha to play with. I saw bunches hanging from single and double Guyot training systems and from the region’s traditional pergolas. I tasted Famoso that had been matured in stainless-steel and glass-lined cement tanks, and also in oak barrels. I tasted it as a sparkler in the image of both champagne and prosecco and as a dry, off-dry and sweet still wine. What surprised me most during this trip, though, was the level of experimentation. On a recent trip to the region I counted 12.25 ha of Famoso in total and heard of more in the pipeline.
It became an official Italian grape variety in 2009 and will surely be a candidate for any subsequent edition of Wine Grapes as the next – 2010 – census of Italian wine grapes shows there are 6 ha planted and a growing number of commercial producers are making wines from this big-berried, loose-bunched, early-to-mid ripener. They liked the grape’s toughness, the wine’s distinctive floral aroma and light acidity, saw its potential for producing a top-quality white wine, and started the legal process involved in registering the variety with the authorities. All that was left were two rows of vines yielding table grapes at the Montalto farm in Mercato Saraceno, near Forlì.īut the discovery of these two rows inspired a band of local wine producers with a passion for indigenous grape varieties to experiment with the vines, the wine and to join together to save the variety. Although it was mentioned in tax documents as long ago as 1437, after phylloxera ravaged Europe’s vineyards in the late 19th century it fell into decline and had almost disappeared by 2000. It was ignored because, in 2000, the date of the most recent Italian vineyard census available when Robinson, Harding and Vouillamoz were researching their tome, officially there were no hectares planted with Famoso vines, and while they were writing in 2009-11, there were no commercial wines being made from this ancient grape variety. It’s an odd name for a grape variety that isn’t even a footnote in Wine Grapes.
Writer, winemaker and part-time wine-production student with a special interest in Slovenia Chris Boiling visited the region to investigate.įamoso means famous in Italian. This Italian region is not famous for its ancient indigenous grape variety Famoso – which, despite the name, is not famous anywhere. I'm sure that, if we were to republish Wine Grapes today, two years on from the original publication date, it would be the Italian section that would be increased the most – JR.Ģ7 October – Thanks to Tam's articles on Lambrusco and balsamic vinegar from Modena, we are familiar with some of Emilia-Romagna's best-known liquids. 20 November – We are republishing Chris Boiling's account of the revival of just one of the many grape varieties currently being recuperated in Italy's vineyards as part of our Throwback Thursday series.
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