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The Pelaverga Piccolo Vine, morphological characteristics
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VERDUNO
PELAVERGA
History and stories
Popular tradition has it that the Pelaverga vine was introduced in the town of Verduno in the XVII century, by., Blessed Sebastiano Valfrè, who brought some vine growing in the zone of Saluzzo. Present from time immemorial on the hills of Verduno connected with the story of Blessed in Fragrance of holiness, but also talked about as aphrodisiac, has always been considered a young adventurous knight, lively and light-hearted, a little saint and a little devil, in the court of King Barolo.
 With its fragrant and spicy aroma, with a white pepper scent, it is considered a rarity by careful connoisseurs and enthusiasts in continuous search of new emotions.The impulse to grow such a vine was given to King Carlo Alberto of Savoy/Carignano(1798-1849), a great estimator of wines and in particular of Peleverga, since he possessed a country palace in this town with vineyards belonging to it.
Not even Peleverga managed to escape the scourges that swept across European wine growing between the XIX and XX centuries. Phylloxera, oidium, grape mildew made wine growing tremble and put the income of families from the Langa into great difficulty.
Once a remedy was found for these scourges, wine growing
started to flourish again until new and perhaps even
worse scourges hit it. The two World Wars and economical
crisis following the first and pre-announced the second,
put winegrowing in the Langa into difficulty once again.
In the 50’s of the XX century, Peleverga was sporadically
grown and used to produce grapes for eating, which were
sold in the markets in Turin, or were used in other local
vineyards. Slowly its diffussion diminished drastically
nearly making it disappear. In the 70’s, always in the
last century, thanks to the intuition of some great vine-dressers
from Verduno, one being Mr. Giuseppe Priola, one of the
owners of Bel Colle, saved Peleverga from extinction
and was recovered. Since then, up till today, the growth
of Peleverga, through physiological ups and downs, has
never stopped, reaching in 1995 the sought after D.O.C.
recognition. The Verduno Pelaverga or simply Verduno
wine, represents a small pearl of Langa oenology, therefore
worldwide, a precious patrimony to respect and make use
of to the full. The total area of the Pelaverga vineyards
is only 15 hectares, but its importance for the territory
which produces it is decisively relevant, more than any
other wine grown In the 1990’s the Piedmont Region made
a very close study of the two vines grown in Verduno
and the Saluzzo area, and it concluded that they are
two completely different vines, with just one thing in
common. The name. To demonstrate such an affermation,
in the National Catalogue of Vine Variety, Peleverga
of Verduno has been registered as Peleverga Piccolo,
a characteristic regarding the grape, to distinguish
it from the other Peleverga.
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