One may remember the case of the triplets separated at birth. In 1980, Robert arrived at college in upstate New York where everyone called him Eddy. Perplexed he spoke with someone that knew Eddy, and after a phone call, Robert found his long-lost twin, Edward.
Major newspapers covered that story, and a third brother, David, is found after his adoptive mother spots the twins in a newspaper article. The triplets were identical and all had similar habits, hairstyles, and personalities. The story told in a documentary called Three Identical Strangers, was somewhat bittersweet.
In the wine world, similar stories have evolved. Primitivo is a dark-skinned grape that produces dark juice, almost black in hue, known for relatively high alcohol and tannins. It is a wine that one would age so that it can mellow out the tannins. Long been known that it came from Croatia, it mainly grows in Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot.
California has its own dark juice known for its high alcohol and tannins. Known as the California Wine: the world-famous Zinfandel. In academia, scientists had been attempting to tract the lineage of the grape since the 1950s.
A professor at the University of California, Davis, had over the years sleuthed out the evolution of various grapes like Chardonnay and Syrah. Dr. Carole Meredith is one of the top variety scientists in the wine industry. The relationship between the two came to question as early as 1967 when another UC Davis Professor visited Puglia and detailed similar characteristics between Primitivo and Zinfandel. In 1968, pre-DNA, a Primitivo sample came to California.
Physical analysis of the grapes showed them likely identical. DNA techniques eventually developed that would provide answers. On December 18, 2001, Dr. Meredith and scientists at the University of Zagreb in Croatia finally proved the relationship between Primitivo and Zinfandel. However further analysis proved what had been suspected for years. There was a triplet, but its name was not David. Proven in 2011, it had several other names, most prominently Tribidrag.
With the family tree fleshed out, Primitivo began to flourish, where only a few years earlier, it had been slated for removal from some regions. It was a difficult grape to manage in the vineyards and was susceptible to mildew, frost and disease. The European Union had identified it as an undesirable vine. However, the program of pulling inordinate amounts of Primitivo ended, now that it had a respectable family in California.
Its history is a common story. In the 1700s, a priest named Don Francesco imported the grapes from Croatia. He noticed the Tribidrag grapes ripened before any other grape, so he started calling them Primitivo, as in Primo-the first. The grapes were easy to grow, and they spread all over Puglia, as its most commonly planted grape.
It arrived in Boston in 1829, from Vienna, and was propagated by a horticulturist named George Gibbs, who later moved to California to follow the gold rush in 1850, taking with him Zinfandel vines. By the 1890s, it had gone from use as a table grape to the most commonly produced variety for wine in America.
Mike Grgich, the winemaker, attended the University of Zagreb Faculty of Agriculture, where he studied viticulture and enology. He was born in Croatia, which was absorbed into Yugoslavia, behind the Iron Curtain. In 1954, he immigrated to West Germany, after obtaining a fellowship to study there. He left for Canada when the United States would not offer him a visa. With perseverance, a winery in California arranged to get a permit and hired him.
Over the years, he worked with some of the finest in California’s wine country, but his roots in Croatia are of interest to this story. His interest in Primitivo was a part of his heritage. In California, Zinfandel, to him seemed very similar to the grape from his homeland. He often mentioned that to others. Born in 1923, Mike is still around.
A few years ago, this writer asked a California winemaker how he was doing, and he said he had seen him recently and he was doing great. With no opportunity to occasion a question about him, he is healthy, and when last, one read -an article; he was still going to the vineyards every day.
Stay healthy, and Cheers
You can reach Robert Russell at rob@rlr-appraisals.com.
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