Leonardo da Vinci’s personal vineyard has been re-created

LEONARDO DA VINCI is remembered as many things—artist, inventor, scientist. “Boozer”, however, is rarely included on the archetypal polymath’s astonishing CV. That might change now that scientists have resurrected da Vinci’s own vineyard.

Da Vinci was a great lover of wine, “the divine liquor of the grape”, as he called it. So much so that Ludivoco Sforza, the Duke of Milan, offered him a vineyard as payment for “The Last Supper”, which he painted for the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan in 1498. It survived for centuries after his death, until it was destroyed by a fire started by Allied bombs in 1943. With it was lost any hope of seeking inspiration from the same liquid source that once fuelled the painter of “Mona Lisa” and the inventor of the helicopter.