Incrocio Manzoni 2.14

Also known as Manzoni 2-14, I.M. 2.14.

One of several red crossings bred by Prof. Luigi Manzoni at the Conegliano oenological school during his 1920s-1930s breeding trials, alongside the better-known Manzoni Bianco (Incrocio Manzoni 6.0.13). Manzoni's goal was a white grape combining Glera's (then still called Prosecco) productivity with Sauvignon's aromatic quality, but the pollen he actually used came from a dark-skinned Bordeaux variety — long assumed to be Cabernet Sauvignon until DNA profiling in 2010 revealed it was in fact Cabernet Franc, giving a black-skinned grape rather than the intended white one.

A genuinely distinct registered variety from the closely related Incrocio Manzoni 2.15 ("Manzoni Rosso") — the two share the identical Glera x Cabernet Franc cross but come from different individual seedling selections within Manzoni's trials, each independently admitted to the National Vine Variety Register. 2.14 was admitted later (2011, MASAF scheda 449, proposed by the Istituto "G. Cerletti" of Conegliano) and remains a minor curiosity with barely any commercial distribution (roughly 2 hectares nationally), concentrated around Conegliano and Vittorio Veneto in Treviso province, with a handful of experimental plantings in Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.