Pelaverga

Pelaverga

A Prestigious Variety of
Illustrious History

A prestigious variety of illustrious and perhaps somewhat mysterious history, as for a long time it was believed to have been brought from the hills of Saluzzo at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Blessed Valfrè, a priest native of Verduno and chaplain at the Savoy court of Vittorio Amedeo II, and that it was the same variety from which was produced the wine so precious that the Marchioness of Saluzzo, Margherita di Foix, sent to Pope Julius II to obtain his favour.

Only in the mid-1980s did it begin to be understood that there might be considerable differences between the variety from Saluzzo and that cultivated in the lands of Verduno and its surroundings. A more in-depth study identified in this variety distinct ampelographic, agronomic and oenological characteristics, enough to make it a cultivar in its own right, which was given the name Pelaverga Piccolo in the early 1990s. Long neglected, it regained the interest of some local viticulturists around the 1970s. Today it enjoys success thanks to the ever-growing attention to indigenous varieties and because it is capable of producing a particularly original wine with a characteristic spicy aroma.