Marzemino

Marzemino has the best publicity of any obscure Italian grape, because Mozart put it in an opera. In the last act of Don Giovanni the title character calls for it by name at his final supper, and every account of the variety since has mentioned the fact. The wine he meant came from Trentino, in the Alpine north of Italy, which is still its home.

It is a light to medium bodied red, deeply coloured but soft, with low tannin, moderate acidity and a distinct violet and dark cherry perfume, sometimes with a herbal edge. Isera and Ziresi, on the gravel and basalt soils of the Vallagarina in southern Trentino, are the sites most associated with it, and the volcanic basalt is credited with the wine's perfume.

The vine is not easy. It buds early, which exposes it to spring frost, and it is prone to mildew and to poor fruit set in a wet flowering, so the crop varies a great deal between years. Plantings are small and largely confined to Trentino and neighbouring Lombardy, with a little in Brazil, where Italian emigrants took it.