Valcalepio

The early days were exciting, thanks to the right combination of expertise and creativity. Prince Gonzaga del Carretto, who owned the Castle at the time, personally brought from France some vine shoots of a new grape variety that the farmers called "burduni": it was actually cabernet sauvignon. The new vines yielded fewer grapes than the local varieties, but their quality was superior and the wine made from them was used for "gifts" from sharecroppers to the owners of the estate.
During those years, European viticulture was by virtually destroyed by phylloxera, powdery mildew and downy mildew, which came with the exchange of goods and people with the new American continent.
The Gonzagas' French vine shoots were also affected.

The economic leaders of the Bergamo province launched the idea of a permanent agrarian educational institution and set up the Grumello Agrarian School, which operated from 1870 to 1919. In 1881, director Giacomo Grazzi Soncini discovered that the copper ion blocked the development of downy mildew spores. It was a miraculous discovery, which put an end to a disease that had blighted European viticulture for decades.
In 1885, the French integrated these basic studies with the observations of Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet from the University of Bordeaux, eventually launching the classic "Bordeaux mixture", which should actually be called ''Bergamasque mixture''.