RARE GRAPE VARIETAL RESOURCE

On the sandy banks of the river Adige, and in particular in the municipalities of Ala and Avio, in the province of Trento, and in the municipality of Brentino Belluno, in the province of Verona, some farms still conserve an indigenous vine, enantio, also known as lambrusco a foglia frastagliata.
Its grapes are used to produce a red wine with an intense ruby red colour that turns to garnet in the Riserva, and a delicate aroma of wild berries. On the palate it is slightly spicy, dry, full and with soft tannins.

It is spelled enantio but is read "enanzio": the first writings mentioning it date back to the Roman historian Pliny, who wrote in the first century A.D.: "Labrusca hoc est vite silvestris, quod vocatur oenanthium", meaning that the "Labrusca grape comes from this wild vine called Enantio".

Between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, phylloxera destroyed a large part of European viticulture, but not the enantium: thanks to the sandy soils of the Adige river bed and their siliceous component, this native grape could continue its productive life, arriving up to the present day in centuries-old free-living vines, i.e. not grafted onto American roots.
The free-living vine, which has now practically disappeared from the ecosystem of European viticulture, is rustic and very long-lived, and makes it possible to reduce the number of treatments for defence against diseases and parasites, even though it requires more manual intervention to control the vegetation and the diseases themselves. When a vine falls ill, it is uprooted in winter and replanted in spring using the technique of propagation, i.e. by burying a branch of the neighbouring vine: a branch of the old vine becomes a new vine, and the link between the two is only broken after the second year, to allow sufficient sap to the new vine.

Despite its centuries-old link with the Lower Vallagarina area, today enantio is little known to the public. The quantities produced are also decreasing: from over 120,000 quintals, which have remained stable for decades, to the current 6,000, produced on about 30 hectares of vineyards, with a tendency to further decrease.

The wine obtained is ideal for red meat dishes or in combination with mature cheeses.

(Courtesy of Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity – Ark of Taste) https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/ark-of-taste-slow-food/enantio-frank-foot-grapevine/

In antiquity, the variety was called Enantinae Uvae by Pliny the Elder and was highly regarded by the Romans for its healing properties. At the turn of the 19th Century it was planted widely in the countryside around Trentino, but, as was the case for many native Italian varieties, began to decline in popularity and consequently production in the later 20th Century.

http://www.vivc.de/index.php?r=passport%2Fview&id=6689

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