Jancis Robinson Review PIGNOLO CTI

He describes himself as a recovering economist. He’s Irish, married to a Friulian, and he first came to Friuli in 1998 with his (new, Friulian) girlfriend. At a meal with what he didn’t yet know were going to be his in-laws, he was introduced to Refosco. In love, and then, suddenly, in love again, differently, it ignited a passion for indigenous grapes that eventually led to TheNativeGrapes.com and Little moving with his wife and two children from their life in Ireland to settle in Friuli.

Little’s foray into Pignolo, which seemed to be initiated by something of a personal crisis of identity and meaning, began in the spring of 2016. He says that he didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was searching. He didn’t choose Pignolo, he writes, ‘Pignolo had chosen me’. A small project, he thought, after having consulted Google. There were only 15 producers. Only 15 Pignolo winemakers in the world. All on Little’s doorstep, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where he’d been living for six years.

It turned out that 15 producers were more like 33, and the more Little dug, the more he realised that this grape variety, so very nearly lost to the world, had quiet guardians in the form of stubborn Friulians. He knocked on doors, got people talking, organised tastings, and suddenly there was a tiny revolution, a revival, under way. This is the story.

The first few pages are a weirdly riveting and somewhat bewildering philosophical peregrination through the meaning and power of creativity, art, imagination and understanding. Pignolo is there, on the pages, but really Little is writing about emptying minds, seeking, living by instinct, ‘lighting your inner wilderness’. ‘In a moment of darkness’, he writes, ‘instinct gives you insight. Pignolo is instinct. I listened to its voice.’

It sets the tone for the whole book: a restless, soul-baring, relentless search that weaves weft and warp threads of politics, history, chemistry, geology, geography, biology, oenology, philosophy, culture, ampelography, philology and glossology, angst, existentialism, identity and etymology into a richly embroidered fabric.

Layers of knowledge, dense facts and a compelling story are punctuated by Dali-esque, collage-like images that at first glance appear to make no sense. Looking at them more closely, I see there is meaning and purpose in every dot and line. Beautiful original artwork (by, it seems, both Ben Little himself and Carin Marzaro) sketch mind maps, cobwebs of connection, pyramids, maps, scribbles and doodles that turn questions and blank spaces into possibilities and poetry.

Do you want to know the polyphenol profile of Pignolo skin in terms of the index of total polyphenols at maturity in mg/kg of grapes? Do you want the index of anthocyanins at maturity, Malvidin-3-O-glucoside*Cl in mg/kg of grapes, or the levels of quercetin, myricetin, kaempferol or the flavan-3-ols that are found in the Pignolo seeds? It’s all there. The shape of the leaves, the five pigments of red and how colour behaves with pH; the IGP and DOC regulations; pruning and training systems; weather patterns and the ages of the soils. Little goes into phenomenal detail about how Pignolo is made, what it tastes and feels like, how it ages and changes at every age.

There are timelines and producer profiles (66 of them, each with the most beautiful portraits of the people, each one with the perfect level of detail for a one-page summary) and appendices on plantings, local and abroad. You might not want to know about philosopher Theodor Lipps’ theoretical process of einsehen (‘in-seeing’) but if you can ignore that, this book is loaded with enough data to make any MW deliriously happy.

‘My whole reason, the reason for this book, the reason for The Native Grapes, is first to nurture understanding so that appreciation can grow’. He describes Pignolo as the protagonist in his story, but not an egoist – a humble metaphor for a universal story: regaining what’s lost, rebuilding anew, identity, community, turning siloed knowledge and data into something deeper, recognising the inextricable connections that mean not just survival but thriving. He called it a multi-story and, having read the book, that resonated with me.

The book has two layers running in parallel. On one level, it’s a brilliantly well organised, forensically detailed, orderly and meticulous work of research. Everything you could want to know about a grape variety and its region. On the other, it’s a glorious, rambling madness.

But, as Nietzsche points out, the lines between madness, reason and love are not clear-cut. Little writes, ‘There is always a choice to be made. Love or money?’ and then goes on to say: ‘In fact, as much as anything, you’ll find Pignolo is about tapping into your own universal sense of being, the freedom to be. Pignolo is that and so much more. Pignolo is love painted in broad brush letters on every cellar door … Pignolo people chose love … Yeah, this is a love story.’

And I might have fallen in love.
I think that sums it up.