June 3rd – A space entirely devoted to Gamay del Trasimeno: who else could create it, if not Madrevite, the company that has been an ambassador for this cultivar for almost twenty years?
The “Gamay del Trasimeno” blog (www.gamaydeltrasimeno.com) has been online since yesterday and will be your guide for finding out more about this variety, which has been cultivated in Umbria for over 400 years on the shores of Trasimeno Lake.
From the vine to…digital media, one might say: in fact, besides the blog, Instagram and Facebook pages have also been launched that describe the life of this extraordinary cultivar.
In the blog it is Gamay del Trasimeno itself that tells its story, revealing its origins and its habits – an all-embracing portrait of a unique variety that was erroneously associated with the Gamay grown in Beaujolais, and which has found its ideal habitat in Umbria.
Recent ampelographic studies sustain that it is the same variety we know of in Sardinia as Cannonau, in the Veneto by the name Tai Rosso, and in France and Spain respectively as Grenache and Garnacha.
For Madrevite, it is the grape that is most representative of the company. Here our Gamay grows in a small vineyard on top of the hill, and it results from the great dedication of grandfather Zino who, in the 1970s, grafted some ancient cuttings from a hundred-year-old vineyard.
That patrimony – with all its wealth of biodiversity – has been repropagated and reconstituted, and today produces tangy, crunchy grapes that give our wine great fragrance and elegance.
Nicola Chiucchiurlotto, owner of Madrevite, continues to seek a perfect synthesis between the skilled practice of traditional methods in the vineyard and a constant, painstaking quest to acquire those technological aids which help today’s vine-growers to produce high-quality fruit that fully expresses the incomparable characteristics of their terroir.
“I will always be a vigneron, who is deeply attached to his land and his vines,” Nicola insists on pointing out, “and it is for this reason that I believe we should give space to the unique story of a grape variety that represents a common thread in the winemaking culture of the Mediterranean”.
