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Leonardo da Vinci's wine was cloudy and hard to digest

An original letter from Leonardo da Vinci has come down to us, we try to give here a translation. It speaks of wine, the wine he himself produced in Fiesole:

"From Milan to Zanobi Boni, my farm manager. 9 December 1515. The last four jars were not as expected and I was disappointed. The vines from Fiesole, treated in a better way, should give our Italy a better wine, as the one of Ser Ottaviano. You know, I already told that the root part of the vine must be fertilized with rubble from old demolished walls so that the roots dry up; and the stem and leaves draw the substances from the air and this makes the bunch perfect. Moreover today we do the worst: we make wine in uncovered vases, and so in fermentation the essences are dispersed in the air and only a tasteless liquid remains, colored by the skins and pulp; plus, it is not decanted as it should be from cask to cask and that’s why the wine is cloudy and heavy to digest. For this reason, if you learn something from these arguments, we will drink an excellent wine. God save you. Leonardo da Vinci."

The relationship between artists and alcohol is a never-ending story. Leonardo da Vinci was known for appreciating good wine and also produced it. Here we have Leonardo complaining to his farmer of the quality of the wine from his vineyard in Fiesole. Leonardo owned a vineyard in Fiesole and one in Milan, dealt with agricultural techniques and designed barrels and agricultural tools. In the text he mentions three techniques of viticulture and oenology that the farmer would have not applied. We asked our friend Sandro Bosticco, sommelier and renowned teacher of gastronomy and wine sciences for a comment. Leonardo complains that the planting of the vines was poorly done, without lime fertilization, necessary to make the soil more permeable and suitable for vines: that's right, that's what they had to do then to improve the soil. Then he says the wine had lost its essences, flown away because it was left to ferment in open casks: false, the first fermentation must obligatorily take place in contact with the air and the percentage of essences lost is insignificant. Finally he scolds the farmer for not having decanted the wine, the consequence is that it is cloudy and heavy: that's right, the wine must always be decanted! We don't know if Zanobi Boni learned how to make good wine…. we hope so for Leonardo!

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