Wine from Leonardo’s vineyard flows after 500 years

HE MAY be best known as the Renaissance polymath who gave the world the Mona Lisa and Vitruvian Man, but Leonardo da Vinci was also passionate about another cultural pursuit – wine, which he described as “the divine liquor of the grape”.

Five centuries on, a team of experts has resurrected a vineyard that he once owned in the middle of Milan, from which they have now produced the first, rarefied batch of white wine.

The vineyard was given to Leonardo by Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, as payment for The Last Supper, which he painted on the walls of the nearby Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie between 1495 and 1497.

The little vineyard survived for centuries before it was all but obliterated by an incendiary bomb dropped by the Allies in 1943. It has been revived by a team of scientists and wine enthusiasts who dug beneath rubble and found the remains of the original vines.

DNA testing identified the grape as malvasia di candia aromatica, a variety originally from Crete that was taken by merchants to Venice and then spread to other parts of Italy.

It is still grown today and vines were brought from the hills around Piacenza, south of Milan.

The first grapes were harvested last year and the wine – called simply La Vigna di Milano, or The Vineyard of Milan – is now ready and bottled. But

‘It’s dry, aromatic and very particular. It is exactly the wine that Leonardo would have known 500 years ago’

British wine buffs hoping to sample will likely be disappointed.

Just 330 bottles have been produced and they are to be sold next month at auction, although the date and location are, for now, under wraps.

“It’s dry, aromatic and very particular,” said Giovannella Fugazza, who produced the wine at the Castello di Luzzano estate south of Milan.

“We made it using the techniques of the past, including terracotta amphorae. It is exactly the wine that Leonardo would have known 500 years ago.”

This year, Italy and France are commemorating the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death in 1519. But the quest to resurrect the vineyard started more than a decade ago when Luca Maroni, an oenologist, began to wonder if any roots had survived in Leonardo’s vineyard after so many centuries.

“I thought to myself, ‘how is it possible that this vineyard existed in the centre of Milan, yet no one knows anything about it?’” said Mr Maroni.

The recreated vineyard is located inside a walled garden attached to a palazzo, the Casa degli Atellani.

The scientific aspect of the project was led by Prof Attilio Scienza, an expert on the DNA of vines.

“We had to dig deep down beneath the rubble and then the soil to find the stumps of the original vines,” said Prof Scienza, from the Università degli Studi in Milan. “They had been preserved by the ash and rubble. We’ve managed to exactly recreate the vineyard from maps that Leonardo drew. It’s been an extraordinary experience.” it