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Abstract
This article briefly outlines the history of wine production and viticulture in the Orvieto region; the starting point is the 1971 Production Regulations which bring together both a more than 2000-year-old heritage and the choices already made by the agronomist Garavini in 1931. In more recent decades, various amendments were made to the Production Regulations which aimed to improve the definition of the complex qualitative offer that developed in parallel with potential customers' needs. The current picture is of a highly specialized cultivation pattern based on the morphological structure, an indicator of a mature market which focuses on Orvieto Classico as its key selling point.
Notes
1 The recognition of the doc Colli del Trasimeno followed on the very year after; this specifies production connected to the lake influence; and still in the same decade there followed the doc Montefalco in 1979. If the establishment of the first two docs owe the early regulation to a long-standing reputation of the product, recognized over centuries and far beyond the local domain, for the DOCs which followed the name of origin is necessary, together with the sector rejuvenation and sometimes it is offered as an opportunity, sometimes as a true need of a territorial check suitable for evaluating an elitist product; this is the case with Montefalco, which again from 1979 has also the docg. In the 1980s four more doc types are introduced and a further three and one docg in the 1990s; in Umbria the tendency to a top quality viticulture is now evident, excluding only the mountain areas.
2 In Orvieto the toponym Vigna Grande, currently a disused barracks area whose space is the object of a renovation, indicates the traditional presence of the cultivation also in the town territory.
3 The European demand comes mainly from Germany, the UK, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark; the extra-European demand is headed by the usa, followed by Canada and Japan.
4 The small numbers displayed for Viterbo territory are due to low levels of interest in the product in the provincial economy, which tends to historically converge to other names such as Est Est Est. The cciaa of Viterbo in fact does not even display the litres of bottled wine.
5 The famous Muffato del Castello della Sala has been produced since 1987 by Antinori; in the same period the winery Barberani, experimentally engaged in the product since the 1960s, applied to its wine the name muffa nobile (the first bottle is dated 1986) before the use of the name was officially prevented while waiting for the regulations. Also, the historic winery Decugnano dei Barbi has produced the muffa nobile since the early 1980s.
6 It has to be remembered that in the fourteenth-century three quarters of the wine entering Orvieto was white (Riccetti, Citation2008, p. 159).
7 The choice is still wide; however, the area suffers from repeated setbacks of a global warming that have lead to the abandoning of recently adopted solutions (wide use of merlot) and to go back to the use of sangiovese and montepulciano as predominant varieties.
8 Interesting are the interviews made within the pilot project Ecomuseo del Paesaggio Orvietano (Ecomuseum of the Orvieto Landscape), now included in the Rural Development Plan 2007–2013 of the European Union. It emerges that before the advent of specialization a high yield red-berry variety cultivation was mainly distributed locally, its quality was varied and often undifferentiated, with a predominance of sangiovese and montepulciano. Sweet wines, for more occasional consumption, were mainly obtained with white-berry varieties, more hard to find (www.provincia.terni/ecomuseo/rilevazione).
9 The famous wine of Sugano is mentioned, preferred by Pope Paul III Farnese (as quoted in Riccetti, Citation2008, p. 147). Today this town has no more producers and conveys its production towards the one of the neighbouring Monterubiaglio.
10 In some cases, there is the impression that olive growing has the simple function of filling the empty spaces left by vineyards; in other cases it contributes to increase the agro-tourism offer and the direct sale in the company. Talking about tourism, the presence of the Etruscan Roman Wine Route has to be mentioned here, a wine-and-food route that goes along the doc areas of Orvieto Classico, Rosso Orvietano, Lago di Corbara and Colli Amerini.