Ronchi di Cialla's Schioppettino di Cialla: 1982-2010

IAN D’AGATA I JUNE 13, 2017

Friuli Venezia Giulia’s Schioppettino is one of the world’s most interesting and potentially great red grape varieties. Schioppettinos are especially characterized by an enticing green peppercorn note that is extremely typical and juicy, bright, mid-weight frames. Ronchi di Cialla’s Schioppettino is an iconic and historic wine in the true sense of those words, and Italy’s finest expression of the grape.

The history of modern-day Schioppettino starts at Cialla, a small hamlet tucked away in the eastern reaches of the Friuli Colli Orientali denominazione. Though the variety has long been grown in the area around the towns of Prepotto and Albana (most likely since the 13th century), over the years it had been reduced to only a few sporadic rows of vines here and there. Nobody was making any mono-variety Schioppettinos until the late 1970s (and certainly none for commercial sale) when the Rapuzzi family of the Ronchi di Cialla estate, spurred on by friends Luigi Veronelli (Italy’s first serious wine journalist) and the Nonino family (distillers of Italy’s most famous grappas), launched the first Schioppettino wine. Success was such that nowadays many other estates have jumped onto the Schioppettino-production bandwagon, with wine critics and wine lovers also singing the variety’s praises loudly.

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Schioppettino’s Rise From the Ashes

The Ronchi di Cialla estate was founded in 1970 at Cialla (the estate’s name derives from the Italian word ronchi, meaning a well-exposed hill with terraces, and the Slovenian word cela, meaning stream), a small group of houses located near the town of Prepotto in the Friuli Colli Orientali. Proprietos Paolo and Dina Rapuzzi opted for a lifestyle change when Paolo decided to get out of the rat race and his job at Olivetti to relocate on in the countryside.

The rediscovery of Schioppettino and the fact that today the wine is both sought after and produced by numerous estates in Friuli Venezia Giulia is a feel good story that shows what human passion, hard work, vision and friendship can bring. Rapuzzi, who was fond of old books and had built up quite the library of old texts, was aware that Friuli had always been the home of many grape varieties that by the 1970s had all but disappeared from the countryside he so enjoyed strolling about. However, he also realized that some of those rare varities he had heard or read about were still hanging on for dear life in gnarly old vineyards, and he longed to do something on their behalf. He began speaking about what could be done with the Mayor of Prepotto, Bernardo Bruno, who, in Rapuzzi’s estimation, owned about thirty of the only seventy or so Schioppettino vines he believed were still alive in the area. Things improved mightily, and Schioppettino’s future became suddenly a whole lot brighter in 1974, thanks to Benito and Giannola Nonino. While searching for pomace of the Schiopettino and Ribolla Gialla varieties (the husband and wife team wished to begin making mono-variety Schioppettino and Ribolla Gialla grappas much as they had first done with Picolit the year before), they became aware that while many producers in Albana, Prepotto and a few other areas within the Colli Orientali (including the likes of Rieppi, Marinig, Bernardo Bruno, and over in the area of Dolegnano, Count Trento) were still growing scattered rows of Schioppettino out of habit and tradition, the variety was effectively an outlaw, as it was not officially authorized for cultivation. This because it hadn’t been inserted into the list of Italy’s official wine grapes by the Ministry of Agriculture (in fact, when Rapuzzi had broached local authorities about making and bottling a Schioppettino wine for commercial sale, he was told in no uncertain terms that to do so would mean the risk of jail!). And so, in 1975, with what now clearly appears to be uncommon and admirable entrepreneurial spirit and foresight, the two Noninos decided to launch their own, brand new, awards ceremony, called “Premio Nonino Risit D’Aur”, meant to celebrate and promote the work of Friuli’s people, as well as the magic and uniqueness of their beautiful region. In this respect, the objective of “stimulating, rewarding and recognizing officially the ancient Friuli varieties, including Schioppettino” was of paramount importance. Giannola Nonino tells me that it was more or less at the same time that she also moved to have Schioppettino officially recognized as a wine grape, and initiated the bureaucratic proceedings to have it recognized as such. The first edition of the Risit d’Aur saw a number of awardees: amongst them, none other than the Rapuzzi family, who were selected for their courage in planting a grapevine with no guarantee they would ever be able to make and sell wine from (this because of Schioppettino’s status of “non-officially recognized variety” at the time of planting; in fact, Rapuzzi’s first official vintage of Schioppettino was only the 1977). Other awardees that year included Luigi Bolzicco of the Count Trento di Dolegnano estate, where Schioppettino had been cultivated and preserved since the 1800s, and Prof. Guido Poggi, the author of an erudite, then state of the art, historical, ampelographic, and technical treatise on Schioppettino.