Greco del Sannio "Janare" - DOP La Guardiense

A Family Vine variety

It is an autochthonous vine, especially Campano, with an ancient and complex history. It is difficult to hypothesise a precise origin, but it can be included among those valuable vines imported into Campania from the Greek colonists coming from Thessaly, perhaps from the city of Aminaios. For the shape of its clusters, which often seem double, there are those who believe (especially the Colucci) that Greco is similar to the vines "Aminae Gemelle", brought to Campania by the Greek colonists about 2000 years ago and also cultivated by the Romans. There are quotations from Cato, Varrone, Virgilio, Colummella and Pliny the Elder. The truth is that from Virgil to our days there is a great confusion in the classification and reconstruction of the history of the Greek for the fact that under the Greek name, in fact, we find many vine variety that differ from one another only to the places of provenance presenting, among them, also marked differences. We can therefore speak perhaps of a family grape variety. There are no true synonyms of the Greek, except the Greco Bianco or Greco di Gerace, which identifies a Calabrian vine variety that has different genetic characteristics from the other Greco. Sometimes in the course of history, "Greco" wines of different origins have been defined, as well as foreign ones, to promote different vines, as happened during the Republic of Venice or in other parts of Italy. So today there are no true synonyms of Greco but only the territorial origin. Among the best known we have the Greco of Naples, of Torre, of Vesuvio, of Somma in Naples, Grieco, of Tufo in Avellino, of the Sannio.