Rows in the city also to promote cultural and tourist projects
The luxuriant rows wind their way up the hill and the majestic Mole Antonelliana, symbol of Turin, is within sight. The lagoon landscape of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Venice, surrounds abandoned vineyards that have been rediscovered today. Leonardo’s vineyard grows in the shadow of the dome of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. 95 vines of native vines are intertwined within the Botanical Garden of Palermo, in Sicily. And then again ancient vineyards cultivated inside and just outside the walls of Siena, one of the most evocative medieval cities.
The vineyards in Italy are capable of growing even in the city. Winemakers and scholars who have been involved in the recovery and revaluation of vineyards, a true heritage of the history of Italy, which have been abandoned for many years, are well aware of this. United by the common goal of protecting the historical, enological and landscape heritage represented by the vineyards located within the inhabited centers, in the shade of buildings and monuments, enhancing them from a cultural and tourist point of view, they have created together with other realities outside the Italian borders , the Urban Vineyards Association – UVA , the international network of urban vineyards.
Founded in 2019 on the initiative of Luca Balbiano , who manages Villa della Regina in Turin, the association brings together the surviving vineyards within the city centers, treasures of biodiversity whose grapes are steeped in history and beauty.
“The project is of recent birth even if its roots are far away – explains the president of UVA, Balbiano – The associates are winemakers who have been carrying out for years a single project of urban viticulture, in which they tell much more than wine. They tell of history, culture, centuries-old traditions and in some cases even millenary. In 2018, after a research work, we brought together the first six urban winemakers, and the following year we created the association. Today we are eleven scattered between Italy and the rest of the world ”.
On the more urban slopes of the Turin hills stands the Villa della Regina in Turin, commissioned by Maurizio di Savoia in 1600. Inside there is the Vigna della Regina , created as an integral agricultural and recreational part of the residence. Abandoned for years and then hit by the bombings of the Second World War, the vineyard was recovered between 2003-2006 with an intervention by the Superintendence for Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage of Piedmont entrusted to the Balbiano Winery. Here 2700 cuttings of the black grape variety of Doc Freisa di Chieri have been replanted. City pollution does not affect the vineyard, which is elevated above the urban area and away from the road, and the hives located just behind the Villa confirm this, as bees live where the air is good.
The Laguna nel Bicchiere Association was born from the curiosity of Flavio Franceschet , who in 1993 made the discovery of the vineyards of the lagoon and, in particular, of the orchard-vineyard of San Francesco della Vigna on the island of Sant’Elena, a district of the historic center from Venice. Since then, with the Laguna nel Bicchiere project, Le Vigne Ritrovate has recovered the abandoned vineyards of the lagoon to safeguard a tradition and protect an original and almost unknown landscape, revealing its hidden city-countryside relationship.
Also in Venice runs San Francesco della Vigna which is the oldest urban vineyard in the city . Overall there are three cloisters, two are used as a vegetable garden and vineyard, while in the third rainwater is collected, which is then used to irrigate the rows. Since 2019 the vineyard has been cared for by the agronomists of Santa Margherita, who have replaced the old teroldego vines, with which the Friars Minor produced about 2000 bottles a year, with glera and malvasia.
Senarum Vinea: the historic vineyards of Siena, in Tuscany, is the project of recognition and enhancement of the autochthonous viticultural heritage and of the historical forms of cultivation in the walled city, conceived by the Laboratory of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities of the University of Siena, promoted by the National Association of the City of Wine with the contribution of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation and entrusted to the Castel di Pugna Agricultural Company. It is an experimental path that has made it possible to rediscover centuries-old strains of 20 native and minor vines that have survived until today, but long forgotten and at high risk of extinction, including gorgottesco, tenerone, salamanna, prugnolo gentile, rossone, mammolo.
In the heart of the Borgo di Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, the vineyard of Leonardo , donated to him in 1498 by Ludovico il Moro, grows again, with rows existing a century ago. At the bottom of the garden of Casa degli Atellani, Leonardo da Vinci cultivated aromatic Malvasia di Candia in the Renaissance. In the footsteps of the Tuscan genius, in the very place of his vineyard, the malvasia cuttings were replanted in 2015. The Vigna del Gallo of the Botanical Garden of Palermo , in Sicily, one of the most important Italian academic institutions, a huge open-air museum of over five thousand plant species, houses 95 vines of native vines, an invaluable heritage of Sicilian viticulture. It is a tangible testimony of the island’s biodiversity. The project was launched in October 2018 by the museum system of the University of Palermo and the Consortium for the protection of Doc Sicilia wines, with the collaboration of the Department of Agriculture of the University of Palermo. The Vigna del Gallo is an area of about 200 square meters. It hosts native vines (among them grillo, nero d’Avola, frappato, perricone, catarratto, inzolia) and reliquia vines (prunella, muscaredda, corinto bianco, cutrera, zuccaratu, visparola).
The latest arrival among the winemakers of the UVA network is Etna Urban Winery in Sicily, a wine tourism welcome project that allows you to get to know an extraordinary place in the countryside and urban vineyard between Mount Etna and the city of Catania. Here, a place that had been abandoned for over 60 years has been recovered and has been restored to its original use as a vineyard with cellar.
The international network also includes the Clos Montmartre vineyard in Paris, Clos de Canuts in Lyon, the Clos della vigna at the Palais des Papes in Avignon and very recently the Rooftop Reds in Brooklyn with a view of Manhattan.
“What we want to do is not a wine sales operation – continues Balbiano – but carry out a cultural and tourist project to tell the stories behind urban viticulture”.
