The keeping of family, local history at Villa Rubini

To pull up to Villa Rubini is to visit a vineyard frozen in a moment in time.

Surrounded by grounds that date back to the 1500s, the still-standing Venetian villa was built in 1720 and has housed the Rubini family for more than 200 years.

Patriarch Domenico Rubini, a silk merchant, bought the estate in 1814, focusing operations on the cultivation of mulberry trees for silkworm breeding. The enterprise tallied one hundred employees, and wine production was also a part of the scene.

Much of the historical conservation of the villa, which has several rooms staged with nineteenth century furnishings, is owed to Rosa Rubini of the current generation.

A doctorate of preservation heritage, Rosa oversaw the setup of exhibits, including a section on silkworm breeding and hand silk spinning, using family documents and antiques.

The vineyards, meanwhile, are cared for by Rosa’s son-in-law Dimitri Pintar, who as enologist and production manager seeks to blend the sense of tradition to make wines “as our grandparents did” with the best modern knowledge available for organic practices.

Part of the Rubini modern lineup includes red wines, which generally take a backseat in world renown to the white wines made in this far northeastern pocket of Italy in Friuli.

The local red varietals come with such tantalizing names as schioppettino, which balances spice with floral elements, and tazzelenghe, which translates as “cuts the tongue,” an apt moniker given the grape’s highly tannic, highly acidic punch.

There is also pignolo, one of those varietals that endears itself despite its challenges. Its name even means “fussy,” and it lives up to the mantle with uneven and generally low yields. The varietal’s high level of tannin also requires patience and perseverance in the cellar.  

Villa Rubini, located in Spessa of Cividale as part of the DOC Colli Orientali del Friuli, late harvests its red grapes and ferments on the skins for a minimum of two weeks, pumping over and punching down to increase contact. Wines then age for a minimum 18 months, alternating between wooden barrels, barriques, or tonneaux, depending on the wine.

Though there has been a general trend in the region to return to such native varietals, in the case of Rubini, there is evidence of maintaining local heritage through the grapevine since Domenico, grandson of the patriarch, established a vine nursery in the wake of phylloxera’s arrival in the late 1800s.

One-thirtieth of an inch long and one-sixteenth of an inch wide, phylloxera is a tiny yellow aphid that feeds on vine leaves, tendrils, and roots. It acts as a sort of vine vampire, draining out the life from the plant.

Native to North America, phylloxera was an unknown pest until the 1860s. The American vine species Vitis labrusca had developed a natural resistance to it. The big debut came with phylloxera’s arrival in Europe during the tail end of the Industrial Revolution thanks to one of the age’s technological breakthroughs: steamships.

Able to cross the Atlantic at faster speeds, steamships sufficiently cut down the length of time for the sea voyage to allow phylloxera, hitching a ride on botanical samples collected by curious Victorians, to survive the journey.

The effects of phylloxera in Europe were first recorded in southern England by 1863 and began striking the continent’s vineyards in France’s southern Rhône Valley and Languedoc in 1866.

Too small to see by eye, phylloxera wreaked havoc in ways as mysterious as they were ruinous.

Vines infected by phylloxera yellowed and shriveled until they collapsed under their own weight. Any grapes that survived produced wines that were weak and watery.

As the outbreak spread and phylloxera feasted its way across borders, it earned its original name as Phylloxera vastatrix, or “the devastator.”

By the time a solution was found in grafting vines onto the resistant American rootstock in 1878, phylloxera had spread to Bordeaux, Portugal, Turkey, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, and as far as Victoria, Australia.

Previously attempted solutions underscored the disparity of the situation to control the formidable vineyard foe. Chemicals, flooding, and even irrigating with white wine – the purpose, it would seem, to restore life to vines with their own essence – were all tried in turn. In France, the government offered a prize of 30,000 francs in support of finding a solution to the country’s stricken vineyards.

In Friuli, which tallied more than 350 varietals before phylloxera, one proposal was replanting with French vines, in the hopes that they could survive the pest. The toll of such a scheme was the sacrifice of native varietals that expressed the local terroir.

Domenico II was named to the government post as a member of the consultative committee that settled on the French-vine solution to counter phylloxera.

His vine nursery was, in part, an experiment to see which Merlot and Cabernet Franc clones would best suit the land. Its main purpose, however, was the propagation of local vines, including schioppettino, also known at that time as ribolla nera or pokelza. There are also records of tocai fruilano, ribolla gialla, verduzzo friulano, and picolit.

In 1909, Domenico, who began is studies in agriculture at the University of Portici in 1885 and went on to become a professor of agronomy, published I dintorni di Cividale – Studio geoagronomico. It included classifications of soil types and outlined challenges associated with different areas of the region. It was one of the first looks at farming as an industrial or economic growth opportunity and not just an individual livelihood.

Domenico’s son Pietro would go on to become a charter member of Ducato dei vini Friulani, an organization that awards and recognizes producers who excel in and promote Friulian wines.

Today’s organic practices at Villa Rubini and other preservation efforts, including the reduction of water usage by 85 percent, led by Dimitri are a continuation of two centuries of family dedication to protect the land as gift to the next generation.

Dimitri’s attention to all levels of detail comes through in the middle of the tasting when his cell phone rings, perfectly timed to the crescendo in the James Bond theme.

“That took me the whole afternoon,” he said with a sheepish grin.