We find the first mention of Bondola between the red grape varieties of Romance Switzerland in a eighteenth century book in German language (Schinz, 1786) that we can translate so: "Bondola is a grape [with bunch] very short, spherical berries, of nice, sweet and intense flavor, that provides a fine and valued wine.".
The citations for this variety are always limited to the area of the Swiss Ticino canton and the neighboring territories of Piedmontese Val d'Ossola; the 'Negrone' mentioned among the grapes of lower Ossola valley in the late eighteenth century (Albertazzi, 1791), could match to our cultivar that is still cultivated in the same area with this synonym.
Bondola is also a synonym of the Central European variety Mohrenkönig shown by Viala and Vermorel dictionnaire (1910) as a grape from Styria and High Tyrol, also present in Slovenia with other synonyms.
A description of the modern Bondola accompanied by excellent photos has been recently published in Switzerland (Dupraz and Spring, 2010).