Where do these Italian grapes come from, and why do they taste the way they do? Ten answers. The first eight are about grapes we make wine from in El Dorado County; the last two are Italian cousins worth knowing.
1. Sangiovese means "blood of Jove," from the Latin sanguis Jovis, a grand title for a grape that tastes mostly of cherries. It is Italy's most planted grape, with more than 100,000 hectares, and the backbone of Chianti and Brunello di Montalcino.
2. Sangiovese's paper trail begins in 1590, when Giovanvettorio Soderini called it Sangiogheto and warned it turns to vinegar if handled carelessly. DNA profiling reported in 2004 named its parents: Ciliegiolo and Calabrese Montenuovo.
3. Sagrantino was a church grape first. In Montefalco, Umbria, the local consortium traces it to Franciscan friars who used it for the sacraments, hence the name. The first written record is a 1549 order for Sagrantino must. It began as a sweet wine, and today's passito still dries the bunches on racks for at least two months.
4. Sagrantino is the tannin champion. Wine Folly rates its tannin and astringency as super high and suggests an hour in a decanter. The dry style is the newcomer: Montefalco Sagrantino earned its DOC in 1979 and its DOCG in 1992.
5. Primitivo is Zinfandel. In December 2001, UC Davis grapevine geneticist Carole Meredith, with Croatian scientists Ivan Pejic and Edi Maletic, showed by DNA that Zinfandel, Primitivo and Croatia's Crljenak Kastelanski are the same grape. "Zinfandel comes from Croatia," Meredith said.
6. Primitivo is named for being early, not primitive. In the 1700s a canon at Gioia del Colle, Francesco Filippo Indellicati, spotted one vine ripening ahead of the rest. Its American twin reached California in the early 1850s, and an 1888 census found more than a third of the state's grapevines were Zinfandel.
7. Barbera has been in California since the early 1880s, when trial lawyer John T. Doyle imported it from Italy; by 1919 there were about 5,000 acres statewide. Its home is Piedmont, where a 1514 land map of Chieri carries one of the earliest written references. Wine Folly's line is that Barolo gets the talk in Piedmont, but Barbera is what people drink.
8. Cary Gott planted the first Barbera at Montevina in Amador County in 1971. It is now Amador's signature wine; the 13th Barbera Festival, held in Folsom on 29 August 2026, was billed with more than 40 Sierra foothills wineries. By 1870, El Dorado trailed only Los Angeles and Sonoma among California wine producers.
9. Negroamaro probably means "black black," the Greek mavros glued to the Latin niger. It grows in abundance in Puglia and almost nowhere else, some 17,000 hectares of it. Five Roses, a 1943 Negroamaro rosé, is credited as the first rosé bottled in Italy.
10. Montepulciano is a grape and also a town, and the two are unrelated. The grape most likely comes from Abruzzo and is Italy's second most widespread native variety after Sangiovese. The Tuscan town makes Vino Nobile di Montepulciano from Sangiovese. On a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo label, expect red plum, blackberry and dried thyme.
Taste the first four in our cellar in the 1853 Sequoia Mansion in Placerville, or at Camino on Apple Hill, where the music is live.
