🍇 Achladi

Achladi is an old table grape from Greece with red berries. VIVC classes it as cultivated Vitis vinifera; its parents are unknown, and its berries contain fully formed seeds. The catalogue gives 10 synonyms, among them the Italian Pergolese di Tivoli, Uva Ruggia, Aglianicone del Cilento and Lampanzona, as well as the Greek name Petrachladi.

The link with Italy is explained by a study of Italian grape pedigrees based on SNP markers (D'Onofrio and co-authors, Frontiers in Plant Science). The authors identified Achladi with the historic variety Pergolese di Tivoli and named it, together with Moscato bianco, as one of the few key ancestors of Italian varieties that are considered to have come from elsewhere. Achladi used to be regarded as an offspring of Uva sogra and Cacciò di Fermo nero, but the study rejected this: more likely, those varieties descend from Achladi.

According to VIVC, Uva Sacra descends from Achladi (its other parent is unknown), and the French white Servant is a cross of Wildbacher de Hongrie with Achladi, which VIVC lists under the synonym Ferral; both pedigrees were established with genetic markers. Among Achladi's offspring the researchers named many traditional varieties, mostly table grapes, from Italy and also from France, Spain and Greece. In the authors' view, the kinship of Uva Sacra with Plyto from Crete and with Assyrtiko supports a southern Balkan origin for both varieties. Samples of Achladi are kept in 4 collections.

Why it matters to you. Achladi shows how one old table vine could spread around the Mediterranean under different names: if an Italian description mentions Pergolese di Tivoli or Uva Ruggia, it refers to the same variety. And its role as an ancestor helps explain where some of the old Italian table grapes came from.