The first major work to speak of Merlot in Italy was Salvatore Mondini's I vitigni stranieri da vino coltivati in Italia (Foreign wine grapes grown in Italy), published in Florence in 1903. The erudite Mondini, writing about the viticultural situation in Italy following the devastations of phylloxera, documented the presence of the Bordeaux variety in various regions of the North as well as in Tuscany, Latium and indeed in Campania, in Italy's south.From the beginning of the 20th century, Merlot...