It is estimated that Italy has in excess of 500 indigenous wine grape varieties, and the country has also become a second home to many international ones too – but which are grown the most?
vinum absinthiatum, the precursor to vermouth, as noted in first century AD recipe book
De re coquinaria, attributed to Apicius. Much later, in 1570, Giovan Vettorio Soderini, a Florentine agronomist, wrote that “wine of wormwood, rosemary and sage is still made in Hungary and is drank in Germany” (
Trattato della coltivazione delle viti, e del frutto che se ne puô cavare), while in 1773, Volterra-born Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi stated in his
Enologia toscana that “nowadays, a medicinal and digestive white wine with the Germanic name Wermouth is much esteemed in Tuscany and elsewhere”. History lesson aside, Antonio Benedetto Carpano is credited with making vermouth a viable commercial drink by adding sugar and upping production in Turin in 1786.