Trollinger
Italian grape variety
Trollinger, Schiava, or Vernatsch, is a red German/Italian wine grape variety that was likely originally cultivated in the wine regions of South Tyrol and Trentino, but today is almost exclusively cultivated on steep, sunny locations in the Württemberg wine region of Baden-Württemberg. It is primarily known under the synonyms Trollinger in Germany, Vernatsch in South Tyrol and Schiava in other Italian regions. As a table grape the variety is sometimes known as Black Hamburg, which is commonly confused with the similar synonym for Black Muscat—a variety that is actually a cross of Trollinger and Muscat of Alexandria.
According to wine expert Oz Clarke, Trollinger has moderate acidity and tends to produce light bodied wines with fruity strawberry and subtle smokey notes.
History
While the grape is likely northern Italian in origin, the synonym Schiava is closely related to the Italian word for "Slave" and may hint to the type of vine plant in Roman times (forced by pruning). Records show that the grape has been growing in the Trentino-Alto Adige region since at least the 13th century. The German synonym Trollinger appears to be a corruption of the word Tirolinger meaning "of Tyrol". The synonym Vernatsch appears to have a similar origin as Vernaccia in having the same root word as "vernacular" or "local". British Master of Wine Nicolas Belfrage has interpreted this association as further evidence that the grape likely originated in the South Tyrol/Alto Adige region.
At some point the grape migrated northwards to the southern regions of Germany, though the exact date of its arrival is unknown.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trollinger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.