🍇 Vulpea

Vulpea is an old dark-berried grape variety that the VIVC catalogue lists as Austrian. It is used both for wine and as a table grape. It has 120 synonyms, but is known above all as an ancestor of many Italian varieties, including Glera, from which Prosecco is made.

Its origin is being clarified by geneticists. According to VIVC, one parent is Visparola and the other is unknown. A 2020 paper in Scientific Reports (Crespan and co-authors) names the parents as Bratkovina crna and Gyöngy fehér, based on Lacombe’s 2013 data, and describes Vulpea as an Austrian “founder” of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia assortment, linked by parentage to at least ten local varieties. So on the question of the parents the sources differ.

In the same paper the descendants of Vulpea include Aghedene, Cordenossa, Glera lunga, Glera, Piciule, Piculit neri, Schioppettino and Siora; Piccola nera comes from Vulpea and Heunisch weiss. The authors believe that in the 19th century the variety was in almost every vineyard in Austria and north-eastern Slovenia, and that it probably reached north-eastern Italy in antiquity.

The variety has very many names: VIVC lists 120 synonyms, among them Hulpe, Vulpe, Doretta and Rossetta. In the Veneto, according to that paper, it was known as Quaiara (province of Verona) and as Rossetta, Sciavetta or Doretta (Euganean Hills).

Why it matters to you. Vulpea helps to understand how well-known Italian wines are connected: Prosecco is made from Glera, and Glera, according to VIVC and the 2020 study, is related to Vulpea. Many synonyms mean that the same variety is called differently in different countries, so check the name against the catalogue, not just the label.