9 A white barbesino or a white Grignolino? Anna Maria Nadia Patrone also speaks comprehensively about the Gragnolato or Gragniolato grape variety1 , however, giving greater relevance to the white variant, very widespread in the Tortona area, going so far as to suppose, even, that it was a precursor of Timorasso: "The Gragnolato or Gragniolato grape variety, now disappeared, is cited, early compared to other grape variety denominations, in 1209 in an act with which the provost of the Church of Tortona leases a piece of land 'ad laborandum, videlicet ad plantandum vineam de grignolato' in the Tortona territory in the locality Vicus Siccus. White gragnolato wine (in fact it could also be black) is also remembered with appreciation by Pier de' Crescenzi, who judges it one of the best white wines: 'gragnolata ... unum os habet tantum in granum et est lucidissima et longum habet aliquantulum granum' and produces a wine 'valde limpidum et potens et durabilis et nobilis saporis etodoris et hoc apud Terdonam et in illis partibus maxime commendatur'. Gragnolato could perhaps have belonged to the Timorasso or Morasso family, a particular grape variety of the Tortona and Novi districts, especially in Frascheta, that is, in that triangle of territory between Alessandria, Novi and Tortona, locally 1. In the cellar of Lu in the years 1734-35 it is expressly cited as a white grape variety, while in the 6rst half of the 1G00s in the cellars of Casale and Valenza Po, it is speci6cally indicated that it is Bragnolato from Fubine, in Pierstefano 8erta, Biusi Mainardi, cit., p. 1H7