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| Ramandolo
has been known since the dawn of time. There are sources in ancient documents mentioning the sumptuous banquets prepared for important historical figures visiting Friuli in past centuries, |
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while
the wine is present in the memory of poets and writers who sipped
it at table with the nobility and quoted it in their works or memoirs
of travel in Friuli. I was still only a young oenologist from Friuli when, in the late 1940s--early 1950s, I had the pleasure on several occasions of getting to know this wine as it slowly recovered in the wake of war-time destruction. It was lawyer Antonio Comelli, the son of a wine-grower from Nimis, who communicated to me the enthusiasm of his family for this wine, loved and cared for in particular by his mother, who I remember with great affection. D.O.C. legislation was still to be published, as well as the laws which now regulate the characteristics of grapes, wines and relative commercial production. Inasmuch, Ramandolo depended exclusively on the skill of producers and market demand. |
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Now, after years
of intense and rewarding activity by the Ramandolo Consortium, the
quality achieved by the product and its economic value are finally
recognised, not the least thanks to dedicated work to modernise
the hillside vineyards; equally, the considerable success achieved
by the product on national and international markets has encouraged
the desire to ensure even higher qualification of this pearl of
Friuli wine-growing, requesting and obtaining – the first
in our region – upgrading from Denomination of Controlled
Origin to the more prestigious Denomination of Controlled and Guaranteed
Origin certification. 
Important studies at the University of Udine, conducted by Professors
Zironi and Peterlungher, have shown that the Friuli Verduzzo-Ramandolo
clone is a very ancient vine, cultivated many centuries before the
arrival of the Romans in the area. The DNA of this vine, as well
as other native Friuli varieties which will certainly be similarly
valorised in the future, bears witness to the arrival of grape-bearing
plants, travelling over the centuries, from the Middle East, through
the temperate zone of the northern edge of the Caspian Sea and the
Black Sea, Rumania, Hungary and through to our hilly areas of Friuli.There is plentiful historical evidence, from the tuns and barrels used by Emperor Maximinus to cross the River Isonzo after his enemies had destroyed the bridge, to the name of a road, still today identifiable, leading from the sea to the mountains and thence further north, called Via Barilaria... All this demonstrates, once again, that the wine-making vocation of Friuli, and in particular its hillside areas, has a tradition going back to the dawn of time, and confirms that the attainment of D.O.C.G. certification by Ramandolo is an important stage in an ancient course which continues – and will always continue – to ensure that our quality wines become progressively more and more famous all over the world. (by Orfeo Salvador - Memoris a Ramandul) |
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