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Don't overlook Schiava/Vernatsch

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Walter Speller
Wednesday 4 November 2020
View over St Magdalener vineyards in Alto Adige

See Walter on Rescuing the real Schiava. Here he introduces us to some of the best, by no means all of them called Schiava. You can locate St Magdalener (pictured above) near Bozen (Bolzano) on this map.

For this tasting article designed to follow my scene-setter I am going to switch from Alto Adige to Südtirol and to argue in favour of using Vernatsch rather than Schiava as the grape variety's name. Being such an ancient variety, with so many synonyms attesting to its great age, it is impossible to establish with 100% certainty the truth about its...