1)Your book includes a historial period of more than two thousend years. Wen was there a certain proof of the production of a wine called Uva d'Oro in the province of Ferrara?

The Greek historian strabone and the Latin one Plinio il Vecchio talked about the presence of the grapevine in the Po Delta since VI-IV century b C. One the other hand, a certain proof of the production of a wine called "Uva d'Oro" was given only at the beginning of 1600 by the geotgic Marco Bussato from Ravenna. In his treatise "Giardino d'Agricoltura", published in 1612, he told us: "Some people, talking about their passion for eating grapes and drinking wine, say that ripe uva d'oro is better than other grapes". Such a source is surely reliable because Bussato's family came from Ferrara, and it attended upon serenissimo Duca Ercole I. He did his job of grafting along the coast between Classe and Mesola. However, we have to wait until 1700 to have more precise and direct news about the cultivation of a "Uva d'Oro" grapevine in the province of Ferrara. It was, in fact, the historian Gian Francesco Bonaveri from Comacchio who reported, in his "Storia della Città di Comacchio" (1720), that the wines that are usually drunk in Comacchio taste good and are completely healthy... These wines are made from grapes called d'oro... Domenico Vincenzo Chendi, in His "L'agricoltor ferrarese in dieci mesi", published in Ferrara in 1775, will go on with the talk in an extensive and thorough way.

2) Talking about the famous anecdote that indicates Renata di Francia as the person who brought Uva d'Oro or Ferrara grapevine in the province of Ferrara, what historical truth has your research discovered?

There is no reliable historical reference to prove that Renata di Francia, Luigi XII's daughter, marrying Duca Ercole II d'Este, imported into Ferrara the "Uva d'Oro" or "Fortana" grapevine. In gfact, the most famous historian from Ferrara, Antonio Frizzi, in his "Memorie per la storia di Ferrara", literally says: "Everybody is saying that Alfonso XII imported from the Gold Coast of Borgogna those grapevines that at present [1796] fill our possessions and produce a wine generally known and called Uva d'Oro. Alfonso XII then and not Renata di Francia! The name of Renata di Francia, related to Uva d'Oro, appared for the first time anly at the beginning of '900. Then Vittorio Peglion, in his book "Le bonifiche ferraresi" (1910), resuming the news given by Frizzi, enriches them with a big mistake: "From the chronicles of Mesola we infer that, maybe, it is there that we have to look for the first import of grapevines from Borgogna, due to Renata di Francia, consort (?) of Alfonso XII d'Este....". (We remind you, incidentally, that Renata was the wife of Alfonso's father, Ercole II, from 1528 untill 1559, and so she was Alfonso's mother). Unfortunatley, writers have resumed this mistake, simply unreal, with much superficiality after Peglion ending up by giving credit permanently to the news related to Renata di Francia. Going back to Frizzi, even his statement that Alfonso XII would have imported the Uva d'Oro grapevine must be considered groundless. In fact, he himself refers it in a doubtful way (everybody is saying that...), without referring to an historical document. In the end, in confirmation of our doubt about a French origin of Uva d'oro, we underline that in no treatise of amplelography, even in the more recent ones, we find reference to French origins of our grapevine. On the contrary, in the encyclopedia "Ampleelographie" by Vialà and Vermorel, published in Paris in 1910, in the note about Uva d'Oro they talk about a spread Italian grapevine, with many frits.