The Cembran wine and grappa

The Cembran wine and grappa

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In the Cembra Valley the wine-growing and producing business is one of the main ones. In there many varieties of grapes are cultivated: from white and red Pinot to Chardonet, from Merlot to Sylvaner to Schiava; but the lion's share is taken by the Müller Thurgau: a grape particularly suitable to be grown at high altitude.
There are vineyards in both sides of the valley, especially in the central zone, where it widens allowing broader terracings.
The peculiar climate conditions of the valley and the wealth of minerals of its soil lead to excellent quality levels in the production of these grapes; and from the grapes, of course, the wine is made: several are the Cembran cellars, indeed.

Every summer in Cembra it takes place an exhibition dedicated to the Müller Thurgau. It addresses both to the people working in the wine business and to the bare "amateurs": collateral, gastronomic and cultural events happen there.
During the latest editions around one hundred different varieties have been presented; moreover, usually there's a sort of twinning with one of the many Italian wines.
Cembra attaches big importance to its vineyards, so much that in the emblem of the town a bunch of grapes is depicted.

For more information about the wine of the Trentino in general you can look at the site www.palazzoroccabruna.it [in Italian].

A genuinely Cembran product is the grappa (spirit made from distillation of grape marcs); it's often produced clandestinely (“de sforàuz”, in the Cembran dialect) with domestic alembics, distilling the residue of the wine press or, sometimes, the wine itself (when it has turned out to have low alcoholic content), even if in the strict sense the real grappa is made only from the grape marcs.

Until the reign of Marie-Thérèse of Austria it was allowed to produce grappa (“lambicàr”, in the Cembran dialect): the whole Trentino still belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Afterwards it became illegal: carrying smuggled distillates eluding the checks became a not easy problem. The elder Cembrans still remember the roundup done in the winter of 1953 by the Guardia di Finanza (Revenue Guard Corps), in the attempt to eradicate the underground production of grappa.

Don't think this is a recent issue: in the rooms of the Castle of Segonzano, in the far 1720, it took place the so-called trial of the grappa. Then the people from Segonzano were tried as they contested a proclamation of Count Giovanni Battista a Prato which ordered that the castle sbirro (police marshal) Giovanni Pozza gauged for tax purposes the amount of wine and grappa produced.

Alberto Folgheraiter, in his book I figli della terra, mentions several Cembran expedients to carry the “sgnapa” (the Cembran name for grappa). One of the queerest ones involved the women who, it is said, tended to get “pregnant” with suspect regularity between winter and spring, right when the spirit had to be brought to the buyers (mostly in South Tyrol).
As a matter of fact wives and sisters of the distillers wore a corset (usually made from the pork gut) completely full of grappa: Folgheraiter calls them, with an Italian pun, gravidanze “spiritose” (it can mean both witty and spirituous pregnancy.)

An unusual fact is that also the famous Venetian grappa Nardini in a certain sense comes from the Cembra Valley. The founder of the distilleries, Bortolo Nardin, came indeed from Luch di Segonzano: in 1779 he emigrated to Bassano del Grappa together with two brothers for dedicating to the distillation.
In Bassano the three men were nicknamed the “Nardini”("plural" of Nardin): from this it comes the company name.

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