When you’ve lived in Australia for a while, you’ll eventually notice how many Italians – migrants or their descendants – you meet.

By then you’ll also have noticed how entrenched Italian culture, especially food and wine, is in the local landscape.

Following the major post-war waves of migration, Italy remains within the top 10 countries of birth among Australia’s overseas-born population, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

Many migrants from the post-war Italian diaspora chose to work in agriculture and several Australian wine regions – in particular the Riverina in New South Wales and King Valley in Victoria – boast numerous Italian families whose members have been making wine for generations.

Given this generational exposure and deep appreciation, it’s fascinating to see a small, adventurous group of Australians and New Zealanders travelling in the opposite direction.

I reached out to five of these mavericks, each of whom is carving a name for themselves in Italy, and often bringing a uniquely antipodean adventurous spirit to winemaking, shaking up centuries-old traditions along the way.

Jeffrey Chilcott

Tenute Cisa Asinari dei Marchesi di Grésy, Piedmont

After being part of the Kiwi hospitality scene during the 1980s, Jeffrey Chilcott moved to London to see some of the bands that had never made the long trip to New Zealand performing live.

After a three-month train trip around Europe, he ended up in Italy, where he caught the Nebbiolo bug, prompting him to knock on doors across the Langhe region until Celestino Vacca, the then president of Produttori del Barbaresco, offered him accommodation.

‘People said the Piemontesi may not be so open, but I found the opposite,’ Chilcott says.

In the early 1990s, he would meet with Giovanni Conterno and other old-guard producers to taste local and international wines.

‘New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc was alien to them as a wine style, and they struggled to get their heads around the overtly herbaceous and pungent nature,’ he says.

Chilcott later joined the historic Marchesi di Grésy. ‘I’m the cellar master at Marchesi and I do some travelling for them,’ he says. ‘I’m very close with the family and everyone else in the region.’

Considered one of Piedmont’s top producers, Marchesi di Grésy is renowned for a style rooted in tradition but ‘open to technology’.

Among its 35ha of vineyards, spread across the Langhe and Monferrato, is the monopole Martinenga, owned since 1797 and the jewel in the estate’s crown.

Considered a human encyclopaedia of vintages, Chilcott has witnessed the rise of the modernists, influencing his approach to Nebbiolo.

While he believes the variety demands patience, he acknowledges that incremental fine-tuning – particularly in tannin management and winery hygiene – has opened Barolo and Barbaresco to international audiences.

‘You know Campari? It has that dolce-amaro – bittersweet – quality, intrinsic to a lot of Italian food, and people,’ Chilcott says.

‘In the old days, Nebbiolo wasn’t always harmonious – the dolce [the fruit quality] was not always in harmony with the amaro [the tannins, which could dominate and require significant time to integrate].’

David Fletcher

Fletcher Wines, Piedmont

Born in Adelaide and now an Italian citizen, David Fletcher has always had itchy feet. He was working as a winemaker in Victoria, focused on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, when he first discovered Nebbiolo at a Barolo tasting – the wines stopped him in his tracks.

‘I jumped on a plane a year later to work the 2007 harvest at Ceretto, in the Langhe,’ he says. ‘I wanted to learn everything about Nebbiolo. I thought I might take that knowledge back to Australia – which I did to some extent – but I also fell in love with Italy.’

Fletcher founded his own label in 2009, initially buying grapes from Barolo and Barbaresco, and working out of other producers’ facilities.

It wasn’t until 2012, when he started working full-time as winemaker for Ceretto and stopped dividing his time between Australia and Italy, that he was able to base himself in the latter and fully focus on growing his label locally.

The project began modestly, with wines sold mainly in Australia. For sommeliers there it was exciting to pour a Barbaresco made by an Australian; for the people back in Piedmont, acceptance took longer.

‘There are Barolo families older than me and you put together,’ he says. ‘In Langhe, it’s a very hands-on, relationship-based business. In Australia, you just pick up the phone and someone will do things for you.’

The turning point came in 2015 with the purchase of the building that would become the winery – the dilapidated Babaresco train station, uniquely positioned in a valley surrounded by top-quality vineyards.

‘One morning I walked into the local café and a few pensioners came up to me, patting me on the back and saying I’d done something good for the community.’

Today, Fletcher farms 5.5ha organically, while also making Nebbiolo in Australia under the label of Fletcher, The Minion.

He uses open fermentations, with fully destemmed fruit, extending the ageing beyond minimum requirements in old barriques.

By ‘deconstructing the tradition’, Fletcher has developed a nuanced understanding of the territory.

These days, the only thing he really misses about Australia is his family, though he’s happy to be growing his own in a country where family remains at the heart of everything.

Zoe Johnson

JG Benda, Montalcino, Tuscany

A Sydney-based food and wine journalist with a British passport, Zoe Johnson first bridged the gap with Italy from afar, working in PR for Emilia-Romagna-based kitchen appliance company Smeg and Barilla, the world’s largest pasta producer.

In 2014, she was sent to Venice to assist Australian architects at the Biennale exhibition.

‘From there I decided to stay,’ she says. ‘I promised my dad I would come home after one year, but I never did – it’s still a problem.’

Her path into wine came almost by chance, at a moment when she was considering returning home as she approached 50.

‘I met John [Benda], my partner; he had previously worked in banking and finance in London, and had just bought some land here in Montalcino,’ she says. ‘The 2021 was our first vintage together.’

Though neither comes from a winemaking background, both share a deep love of Italian food and wine. Their 2ha sit at around 550m, higher than many local sites. The couple do everything together, from working in the vineyard to bottling.

The dry-farmed vineyards are certified organic; in the cellar, the approach is firmly minimal intervention, with no temperature control.

They look after distribution and direct-to-consumer events themselves. They only receive occasional guidance from a microbiologist from the University of Florence.

‘We are pruning now; my hand is very sore – I think I have arthritis from using normal cutters. But we’re so humbled,’ Johnson says.

‘I’m staying in Tuscany because if you find a purpose, it doesn’t matter where you are. And I found everything all in one place – the person I love, the job I love and the land I love.’

Trish Nelson

Gazzetta Wines, Lazio

A globetrotter from birth, Trish Nelson changed countries every five years, only arriving in Australia at age 15. Italy took a little longer.

‘I was working in Hong Kong in architectural design and got really interested in sustainable agriculture,’ she says.

‘I then moved back to Sydney and met Giorgio de Maria, sommelier at Berta and natural wine bar 121 BC.’ De Maria’s contagious passion for natural wine proved decisive.

When Nelson travelled to Italy to pursue a master’s degree in sustainable agriculture, she visited many of the producers whose wines had first inspired her in Australia.

An invitation to visit Cantina Giardino in Campania turned into a year and a half there, working in the vineyard and winery. This was followed by stints in viticulture and winemaking at Ajola in Orvieto and Le Coste, on lake Bolsena in northern Lazio, Europe’s largest volcanic lake.

It was there, two hours north of Rome, that she found her base in 2017: a small house and a run-down vineyard above the town, overlooking the lake.

The Gazzetta natural wines – made from organically farmed Procanico, Ansonica, Malvasia, Trebbiano Giallo, Aleatico, Sangiovese and Merlot grapes, among others – are fermented spontaneously, and made without added sulphur.

To stabilise the wines for export – including to de Maria, her Australian distributor – Nelson relies on extended maceration.

‘The tannins are natural preservatives,’ she explains, ‘and if you’re not adding anything and the pH of the wine is high – which it is here, given the volcanic soils – a few days of maceration helps.’

While awaiting Italian citizenship, Nelson admits that life isn’t a bed of roses.

‘It’s beautiful that tradition and regionality are so strong here,’ she says, ‘but as a foreigner, sometimes you feel like a fish out of water.’

Anna Martens

Vino di Anna, Etna

Having begun your career in microbiology at Petaluma in the Adelaide Hills in 1993 and enrolled in the Master of Wine programme six years later, your trajectory might seem set on a prestigious, if conventional, path.

That was certainly the case for Anna Martens, who, in 2004, was offered the position of assistant winemaker at the cult Tuscan estate Ornellaia, where she had previously worked, during the 2001 vintage, in the laboratory.

However, a chance encounter that year with Eric Narioo – founder of UK importer Les Caves de Pyrene and a key figure in the natural wine scene (and now Martens’ husband) – redirected her path to Sicily.

‘Etna was very different back in 2007,’ Martens says. ‘I was working for Andrea Franchetti at Passopisciaro. A few cult names from that versante [‘slope’] were on the rise, like Girolamo Russo and Alberto Graci.’

Martens had already been exposed to natural wine producers through Narioo, which convinced her to adopt a low-intervention approach.

The first Vino di Anna red, 95% Nerello Mascalese, 5% Nerello Capuccio (co-planted), was made in 2008.

‘Until that time, I’d always known that if something didn’t work out, I could add sulphur, enzymes, or filter everything,’ she says.

‘We made our first wine by literally putting whole bunches, with no sulphur, into two mastelloni [‘wine tubs’]. There was so much energy in the wine! Producers told us we were crazy, while to the older locals it was reminiscent of their family wine.’

Now splitting her time between London and the village of Solicchiata, on the northern slope of Etna, Martens says that returning to Sicily always resets her.

‘Every time I land in Catania, I take off my watch, drive with an Italian flair up to the winery, and soak in the luminosity of the place,’ she says.

Martens attributes a profound shift in both her approach to production and her lifestyle to what she has learned on Etna, through others and through the terroir itself.

‘I’ve been asked why I used to rush the wines,’ she says. ‘Energetic as I am, when I get to the winery, the surroundings ground me.’

Italian wines made by Antipodeans

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Romano dal Forno was born in 1957, the only son of a family of small vineyard owners in the valley of Ilasi, in the east of Valpolicella.

Like many families in the valley, the Dal Fornos had always produced wine for their own use and sold the bulk of their grapes to the local cooperative. Romano was the first to bottle and sell wine under his own name.

When I first met Romano towards the end of the 1980s, we spoke at the kitchen table of his family home.

A flight of rickety steps led from the kitchen to the tiny underground cellar where Romano’s entire production was ageing in traditional casks.

A single light bulb dangled from the ceiling of the cellar – the scene was one which you would have found in the homes of countryside families the length and breadth of Italy in those days.

Passing in front of the Azienda Agricola Romano dal Forno today, the company headquarters could easily be mistaken for a rather grand 17th-century Venetian villa from the outside.

The architecture, along with the decor of the reception areas are of the era, however the grape-drying and vinification facilities are high-tech, with an array of equipment designed to the company’s own specifications.

The cellars go down three levels, and the vaulted barrique cellar alone extends for an area of 1,392m².

Valpolicella's best-kept secret

The vineyard area has grown from the original 7.5 hectares to 35ha, and production from 5,000 bottles a year to an average of 50,000.

The wines – which for most of the 1980s were Valpolicella’s best-kept secret – today enjoy iconic status.

The transformation of the azienda has something of a fairytale story about it, and in fact Romano himself says: ‘Sometimes, when I’m on my own in the winery, I wander around and I think to myself, how on earth did I manage all this?’

Romano made his first official vintage in 1983. He was 26 years old and recently married.

Bursting with energy, he was idealistic and galvanised by the dream of making quality wine. But breaking with the local cooperative was a giant step.

When Romano told his father he wanted to start his own production, his father took it badly. Where was the sense in setting up in competition with the cooperatives?

In the end his father acquiesced, but looking back now, Romano has to admit that he was right to be sceptical.

‘In the 1980s, the word “quality” did not exist in the Italian language. You had to produce quantity to get ahead’.

Learning from a legend

It was about that same time that Romano met Giuseppe Quintarelli, with whom he formed a lasting relationship.

The legendary Amarone producer was an inspirational figure for Romano, but when it came to making wine, he was determined to do it his way.

‘I didn’t want to be a copy of Quintarelli… I wanted to stand on my own two feet’, he says, continuing, ‘Giuseppe always used to say, “We have always made wine the way tradition commanded, and how it always has been”, but that jarred with me’.

Romano could not relate to a tradition that was not a part of him, but there was one instance at the start of his career when following Quintarelli’s advice proved to be a game-changer.

Quintarelli had suggested that Romano thin out the crop, which he did – not by removing whole bunches, but by cutting away the bottom of the bunch to leave only the wings, known as the ‘ears’.

‘I saw immediately that this was a good thing to do, but also very risky,’ he recalls. ‘The results were great when the weather held, but in years when it rained it was a disaster’.

Despite the risks, with this extremely rigid selection using only tiny bunches of the very best fruit, Romano was able to produce high quality wine.

This attracted the attention of an American importer and enabled him to enter the US market at the end of the 1980s, commanding prices well above the average for the period.

At this stage, no more than 5,000 bottles were being made from his 7.5ha of vineyard – around 3,500 bottles of Valpolicella and 1,500 of Amarone.

These drastically reduced yields and hyper-selection became hallmarks of the estate, but Romano knew that castigating the vines in a vineyard which was not designed for low yields was a compromise.

Following visits to France to study high-density planting, Romano planted a vineyard with 11,000 vines/ha in 1996, and over the next 10 years, between new acquisitions and the replanting of existing plots, he converted the entire estate to hyper-density, resulting in revolutionary low yields unheard of in the Veneto at that time.

Rethinking the process

The vineyard is the starting place, but it does not stop there. Romano likes to cite the late Carlo Petrini’s dictum that, ‘From great grapes you can also make excellent vinegar’, and the refinement of the vinification processes has played a crucial role in the evolution of the winery.

The distinctive features of Dal Forno’s wines – the purity of fruit, the dry elegance, the finesse of the tannins, and the extreme technical precision – can all be traced to specific innovations in winemaking over the course of time.

The fruit quality comes from the rethinking of the grape drying (‘appassimento’) process.

Romano recounts that in the first years: ‘Clients used to come to visit... and I would proudly show them grapes still laid out to dry in April. When I think about it now, I think, how stupid I was’.

The concentration that comes with appassimento is indispensable to Amarone, but over-long drying compromises the purity of the fruit, introducing notes of advanced evolution.

‘Appassimento isn’t like sending a school kid to do cramming lessons to make up for what he didn’t learn at school’, Romano notes. ‘It’s that extra bit of study that helps him to excel’.

Reducing the length of appassimento meant going back to the vineyard and picking later to have levels of ripeness which offset a shorter period of grape drying.

Grapes for Amarone now dry for no more than 60 days, and since 2001 the fruit for Dal Forno’s Valpolicella is pressed after 30 days.

Since 2020, production has been managed by Romano's son, Marco.

The second milestone in the forming of the house style was the development of a drier style of Amarone.

‘Amarone is an opulent wine; if it’s not opulent it’s not Amarone, but that opulence has to be supported by a freshness and sapidity that make it inviting to drink’.

Final tweaks

Obtaining the elegance of the style he was looking for meant reducing the residual sugar, but up until 1993, when he moved into new, purpose-built cellars, fermenting all the sugar out of musts with the massive concentration of partially dried grapes was problematic.

He says: ‘I remember that in the early years, not having the technology, nor the understanding of how to solve the issue, many vintages ended up with residual sugar. Perhaps some clients liked the old-fashioned style, but I didn’t.

'Amarone should have three or four grams of residual sugar, maximum five, but sometimes it used to go up to eight, nine or even 10 grams. They might have drunk all right when they were young, but with age those wines became fat and sticky’.

The ability to control the temperatures in the final stage of fermentation through underfloor heating in the new cellars was the piece of the jigsaw that completed the picture.

From the first vinifications in cement vats in the old family cellar, in order to get the textures he was looking for, Romano has always experimented with crushing, fermenting and punching down together in the same vessels.

When he moved into the new cellars he started experimenting with vinification in barriques.

‘I found out later that in France, Château Le Pin was vinifying in the same way, but I didn’t know that when I started,’ he recalls.

Romano was not satisfied with the initial results, but he learned from the experience.

‘In 1995, I constructed the prototype of a vat that reproduces the vinification in barriques, and from then on, it was plain sailing.’

Defending identity

I put it to Romano that there is great stylistic diversity in the Amarones produced today, and I asked for his views on the direction it should take in the future – should it try to accommodate modern tastes, or remain faithful to its origins?

His reply left no doubt about his convictions: ‘There is a theory among some producers that Amarone should become a wine to drink throughout the meal… but it has no sense.

‘Amarone is not an everyday wine. We are talking about wines with 16-17 degrees of alcohol. I can’t imagine an Amarone with 14 degrees. To go under 16% you lose concentration, you lose substance… If we turn Amarone into a vinello ('a little wine') what have we achieved? We’ve lost that identity that has brought us to where we are today.

‘When we begin to put into question emblems, Amarone and Recioto… we are destroying our history’.

Dal Forno Amarone in some vintages, such as the great 2011, has touched 17% abv and perhaps even a half a point higher, but the wines have always maintained that characteristic. The current aim is to stabilise at 16%, but not to go under.

Romano believes that accommodating Amarone to perceived commercial demand for wines to drink throughout a meal is a betrayal of its true character.

‘Reducing the alcohol, you have to press earlier and then you lose concentration and substance'.

A taste of precision

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Timorasso is a native, white Piedmontese grape variety that had almost completely disappeared but has made a remarkable comeback.

References to the variety (sometimes under different names) suggest it has been grown in the region since the early 13th century, but only half a hectare of Timorasso remained by 1985.

Once destined for oblivion, the grape was saved when visionary pioneer Walter Massa recognised its potential.

Massa became the first – and for some time, the only – person to believe in the variety, especially its capacity for ageing.

But others began to see its potential too and by 2025, plantings of Timorasso had grown to 500 hectares.

What does Timorasso taste like?

The typical characteristics of this hard-to-cultivate variety, which also requires careful attention during vinification, include lively acidity, accompanied by a sapid, lingering finish.

Often quite deep in colour – veering towards gold – it can be both mineral and lemony in character or richer, with stone and honey notes.

If you see one be sure to ask what style you're going to get!

Where is it grown?

Timorasso is now the focus of wine production that has transformed the Colli Tortonesi, an unspoilt environment where vineyards, orchards, fields, woods and meadows coexist in a mosaic of biodiversity.

Colli Tortonesi in Piedmont is a place where new wineries keep appearing, and even producers from the Langhe are investing here.

Derthona (a future sub-zone of the Colli Tortonesi Timorasso DOC) continues to grow steadily, underlined by the ‘Derthona Giovani’, a vibrant group of young winemakers collaborating to drive forward these increasingly promising Timorasso wines.

Timorasso: Five to try

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The Ca’Marcanda project in the sea-kissed region of coastal Tuscany began in 1996, led by the pioneering vision of Angelo Gaja.

It was a decision fuelled by curiosity – his daughter Gaia coyly jokes that her father could be accused of ‘cheating on Nebbiolo with Cabernet’.

Yet, what Bolgheri really represented was a great sense of freedom.

‘Stylistically there were no preconceptions; it’s the new world of Italy,’ she notes.

The Gaja name is perhaps best known as a leading light in Piedmont under Angelo Gaja, but today the family’s estates span three regions of Italy: Piedmont (Barbaresco, Barolo and Alta Langa), Tuscany (Ca’Marcanda in Bolgheri and Pieve Santa Restituta in Montalcino) and Sicily (Idda on Etna).

Settling in Bolgheri

As Gaia explains, ‘We arrived 10 years later’ – namely after the key names that led the historic Super Tuscan movement of the 1980s, from Grattamacco to Guado al Tasso and Ornellaia.

While Angelo Gaja remains involved in key viticultural decisions, since 2012 it has been the three siblings of the family’s fifth generation that tasted and decided each week with the winemaker.

‘Here I grew a lot thanks to the experiments at Ca’Marcanda… It is a philosophy of doing, of being hands-on,’ says Gaia.

The flagship: Camarcanda

Gaja’s 120ha Ca'Marcanda estate focuses on four key labels: three reds (Promis, Magari and Camarcanda) and a white blend, Vistamare.

For the reds, key international varieties take centre stage, namely Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Syrah, in addition to Sangiovese.

The distinct Bolgheri landscape offers a range of soil types, from more sandy to clay-driven and mineral-rich.

This is in particular due to the influence of the Metalliferous Hills, which in the past was a key area for copper, iron, marble and limestone mines.

Recent zoning studies have evidenced around 27 different soil types; to which Gaia acknowledged, ‘the future of Bolgheri will still have a lot of surprises for us’.

Flagship wine Camarcanda represents the estate’s true calling card, produced from some of its best plots.

Today it is a Cabernet Sauvignon-driven blend with the remainder Cabernet Franc, while in the past Merlot also featured.

‘Italianity’ as a marker of identity

Gaia Gaja certainly knows how to command a room. Pulling listeners into her inner circle, she highlights the concept of ‘Italianity’ and the triumph of the ‘ingredient’ or ‘raw material’ in winemaking and gastronomic excellence in Italy.

For her, it's a sense that ‘complexity is not the same as complicated’ that is key, and what truly matters is purity of fruit and territory.

Looking ahead

The effects of climate change on winemaking were already front of mind in Angelo’s choices.

Forward-thinking and ambitious, from the outset he collaborated with university professors, entomologists, botanists and geologists.

Today, Ca’Marcanda remains a forerunner in its approach to the developments and adaptations required by the changing climate in both vineyard and winery.

Working with Professor Andrea Lucchi from the University of Pisa, the estate was involved in an extensive study of insect behaviour that culminated in the pioneering development of ‘smart bugs’, which are being trialled and used to tackle pests in the vineyard, beginning with Ca’Marcanda and now stretching to some 120 other producers.

A focus on the role of mixed agriculture (olives, cereals, woodland), composting practices, and cover crops (such as mustard, vetch and clover) are further strategies employed to encourage biodiversity and healthy soils.

More vigorous rootstocks are being chosen, along with a shift from cordon training to Guyot – in part to tackle vineyard diseases such as esca.

Planting orientations in the vineyard are changing too, with newer vines planted north to south rather than east to west in order to maximise freshness.

In the cellar, blending possibilities are being harnessed to make the most of difficult vintages.

Despite the unpredictability of an ever-changing climate, for Gaia these difficulties also constitute an exciting challenge.

She notes that it is these adverse vintages that provide the opportunity to showcase ‘excellence in consistency’, drawing on decades of experience and the ‘repetition of a craft that goes into the glass’.

The evolution of Ca'Marcanda in six wines

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Known collectively as Alto Piemonte, there are seven small areas in the foothills of the Italian Alps producing wines which are little known outside of the local area – Piedmont's ‘other’ Nebbiolo.

Once upon a time, Alto Piemonte was destination #1 for Nebbiolo, but the majority of the vines were grubbed up as its popularity waned in favour of Barolo and Barbaresco.

Comprising seven localities – Boca, Bramaterra, Faro, Gattinara, Ghemme, Lessona and Sizzano – today's Alto Piemonte wines are made on a scale that makes even the smallest wineries in the Langhe seem Bordeaux-like in comparison.

‘In Alto Piemonte, we lost a lot of vineyards in the last 50 years,’ says Mattia Antoniotti of the Antoniotti Odilio winery in Bramaterra.

How Alto Piemonte differs to the Langhe

Located on the northern border of the Piedmont region, the Nebbiolos of Alto Piemonte produce a significantly different style to the big hitters further south, tending towards redder fruits and less tannic structure, making for approachable – if occasionally ‘rustic’ – reds.

Conditions have warmed sufficiently in recent years, bringing the Nebbiolos from the marginal Alto Piemonte climate into the conversation alongside the best the region has to offer. As if to hammer home the point, two of the Langhe's top wineries have expanded into the area: Conterno (with Nervi Conterno), and Paitin (with Bianchi).

Below you'll find five recommendations, selected for value and drinkability.

Alto Piemonte: Five to try

The Trentino-Alto Adige region is composed of two distinct geographical and administrative entities: the bilingual Alto Adige/Süd Tirol of the province of Bolzano/Bozen to the north and the Trentino, which takes its name from the provincial capital of Trento, to the south.

Of the two, Alto Adige has undoubtedly gained the most visibility in recent years.

Trentino on the other hand, is known for its classy Trento DOC sparkling metodo classico, but to a large extent the still wines of the province have remained under the radar.

Camera obscura

One reason for this might be that Trentino presents itself to the outside world as a wine region with a certain lack of chiaroscuro.

Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay together account for more than half of the province’s 10,232 ha of vineyards.

Cooperatives make 85% of the wine, 75% of the production is covered by the catch-all Trentino DOC and a significant percentage of the rest is bottled under the even more generic Vigneti delle Dolomiti IGT. (Trento Chamber of Commerce, 2022)

The statistics, however, do not tell the whole story.

Within the global DOC there is a mosaic of terroirs and site-specific wines, beside the commercial varieties there are native grapes of great interest and outside the cooperative movement, there is a dynamic artisan winemaking scene.

When you step off the beaten track, there is a whole world to be discovered.

The province of Trento stretches along the central valley of the Adige for roughly 75km, from the border with Alto Adige near Salurno/Salurn, to Veneto in the south, at the village of Borghetto.

To the west it takes in the valley of the Sarca which leads to the northern shore of Lake Garda, and to the east rises to the high peaks of the Dolomites.

Nuts for Nosiola

The first important growing area, moving south from the border with Alto Adige, lies on the left of the Adige, between Salurno and Trento and includes the villages of Faedo, Pressano, Lavis and Sorni.

This is the habitat of one of the Trentino’s most intriguing native varieties, the white Nosiola.

Not much is known about its origins, but it has a historic presence and these days grows almost exclusively in Trentino.

Production is tiny – Nosiola accounts for less than one percent of the vineyard area of the province – but producers on these sunny, gently rolling, glacial-alluvial hills grow it with conviction, making light, dry, tangy wines with subtle hazelnut aromas.

It is the most traditional of Trentino whites, but the style is very contemporary.

Mountainous Müller-Thurgau

Striking east from the Adige, takes you into the much more extreme growing environment of the Val di Cembra.

Dizzyingly terraced slopes supported by over 700 km of dry stone walls creep up to 900 metres in the narrow closed valley where the grainy porphyric soils and the dramatic diurnal temperature excursions give the whites an authentic mountain wine feel.

Chardonnay and Riesling grow here, but the variety of the Val di Cembra is Müller-Thurgau.

On these terraces, the Riesling x Madeleine Royale crossing makes wines with a steely-dry intensity and subtle herbs and white blossom aromas that set them apart from the more familiar soft and scented profile of the variety.

It is a very different wine to the Nosiola of the Adige valley, but as in the case of the former, it is the variety which best shows off the terroir.

Valle di Cembra Superiore is an official sub-zone of the DOC, and the label is worth looking for.

Mysterious Marzemino

If points north and east of Trento are white wine country, south of the town the warmer, lower slopes of the Vallagarina are dominated by red varieties.

Italy’s very first Bordeaux blend was bottled here in the early 1960s, laying the foundations for a production which is a benchmark for the style.

Cabernet and Merlot, however are relative newcomers compared to Marzemino, which has been documented in the northeast since the 15th century.

Various theories of its provenance have been advanced, including migration from the Middle East across the Mediterranean to Dalmatia and thence to Venice.

But research that demonstrates genetic links with the Trentino’s own native Teroldego (quoted in D’Agata, Native Wine Grapes of Italy) suggests origins much closer to its current home.

Marzemino is a medium-bodied, ruby-violet coloured wine with wild berry-and-violets aromas and a dry finish with firm acidity.

Two specific sites are associated with the variety. The first is on the right of the valley at Isera, where soils of volcanic origin give the wines a light minerally quality

And the other on the left, on the calcareous and basalt soils of the Ziresi sub-zone, where the wines tend to have slightly firmer structure.

Both sites have Superiore status in the DOC.

From holy valley

The Valle del Sarca with its picture postcard lakes, runs roughly parallel to Adige, separated from it by a long mountain range with peaks up to 2,000 metres.

The valley is the elected second home of Nosiola, but here, around the communes of Calavino, Lasino, Padergnone and Cavedine, it makes not a dry white, but Trentino Vino Santo, one of Italy’s rarest and most extraordinary sweet wines.

Nosiola for Vino Santo is picked mid-to-late September, the bunches laid to dry on straw mats in open lofts for a period of not less than six months and pressed around Easter time, a tradition recalled in the name of the wine.

The natural environment of the valley is the determining factor in the unique character of the wine.

It is a story of contrasting forces. On one hand the humidity of the lakes encourages the development of botrytis.

On the other, the daily blast of wind from Lake Garda that rattles the shutters from midday to sunset throughout the spring creates the conditions for a period of drying far longer than for any other Italian passito.

So concentrated are the grapes at the end of this period, that it can take two to three days to squeeze the juice from them in hand-operated basket presses.

Yields are miserly. From 100kg of grapes a producer will typically obtain 15 litres of must, which ferments and matures in small barrels for 8-10 years.

Vino Santo is a wine of exceptional complexity on the nose and intense flavours on the palate, sweet but never cloying (fermentation blocks spontaneously at around 150-170 g/l of residual sugar) with a finesse which is rare among wines of the style.

Average production is around 25,000 half-bottles a year.

Terrific Teroldego

The one important wine which does not come under the Trentino DOC umbrella, but has a denomination all of its own is Teroldego Rotaliano.

The Campo Rotaliano is a wide alluvial plain with shallow gravelly soils on the floor of the valley of the Adige, Teroldego is the grape.

It is presumed to be indigenous to Trentino, however research (D’Agata, Native Wine Grapes of Italy ) shows that it is a sibling of the French variety Dureza, which in turn is a parent of Syrah, and this raises an intriguing question about the geographical origins of the Trentino variety.

Wherever the variety came from, Teroldego is cited in local chronicles since at least the 17th century and has always been held in high esteem.

It is a vigorous variety, traditionally grown on high-trained pergolas to give vent to its productive energy.

The wines are medium-bodied, deeply coloured but only moderately tannic with good acidity and aromas of red fruit and violets and often a hint of bitter almonds.

It needs careful handling in oak, but when it is good, it is very good indeed.

Teroldego ranks among the most interesting native grape red wines of the northeast, however one has to wonder about the quality ambitions of a denomination which allows yields of 119hl/ha, the highest of any DOC red wine in Italy.

Entry level wines can be very simple. The twin villages of Mezzocorona and Mezzolombardo are the most important sites.

Savvy young producers

The producers I have listed at the foot of the sections above are (with the exception of two small cooperatives) small-to-medium scale independent estates, which grow and bottle their own wine.

The agricultural census of 2010 found that there were 168 such grower-producers in Trentino.

Official figures for 2022 show that the number has shrunk to 119, but interestingly, the percentage of the total production made by growers has remained stable at 6%.

It is a niche, but it is very much alive, driven by the independent spirit, energy and innovation of a generation of very savvy young producers.

Many of these are represented in the following notes on some of my favourite artisan wines from recent trips to Trentino.

This included a visit in March this year to the excellent Vinifera show dedicated to artisan winemakers from northern Italy’s mountain regions.

The wines of Trentino

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Michelle Cherutti-Kowal MW, Jason Millar and Stefan Neumann MS tasted 77 wines, with 5 Outstanding and 22 Highly recommended

Unoaked Italian reds: Panel tasting scores

77 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 5

Highly recommended 22

Recommended 45

Commended 5

Fair 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit red wines of any vintage from anywhere in Italy, made from grape varieties indigenous to the region of production, either 100% varietal or in a blend containing a minimum 85% of indigenous varieties; no vinification or ageing in oak of any type was permitted

Eschewing the oak

Wooden barrels have been used in the wine industry since Roman times, with producers commonly making use of local woods such as acacia, pine or chestnut.

Over time, oak became the preferred material due to its tight grain and abundance across Europe.

As winemakers recognised its positive influence on tannins and flavours, oak gained dominance in today’s wine industry.

Ripe black fruit flavours mixed with smoky (oak-derived) vanilla equals enjoyable drinking experiences for most consumers.

In the production of reds, winemakers use oak barrels or chips to add flavour and complexity, and to help soften tannins, which begs the question: don’t all red wines have oak?

There are more unoaked red wines made than we might initially realise; often they’re simpler, fruitier wines intended to be drunk young – Beaujolais and young Rioja being notable examples.

Yet no other country has more of an association with unoaked red wines than Italy.

The decision to not use oak is based on the desire to preserve the pure expression of a grape variety, to highlight regional terroir, or to create a fresher, more fruit-driven style.

Vessels such as stainless steel, concrete vats and clay amphorae allow for minimal intervention, letting inherent flavours shine – ‘wines without lipstick’ is how Jason Millar described these wines; completely exposed, without any beautification.

‘Wines that bring an element of joy to the drinker’

For this tasting, 17 of Italy’s 20 regions were represented. Piedmont, Tuscany and Sicily topped the list in terms of entries.

Sangiovese was the most popular variety, followed by Barbera – understandable, given that they’re two of Italy’s most planted varieties.

The main discussion among the judges was whether an unoaked wine could be more than simple and fruity. Could it be complex and have the ‘wow factor’?

The top achievers were simple but also concentrated and delicious expressions – ‘wines that bring an element of joy to the drinker’, according to Stefan Neumann MS.

Ultimately, our question was answered.

Without oak, these wines were capable of expressing purity and a true sense of place. And they certainly had that wow factor!

What to eat with unoaked Italian reds, by Fiona Beckett

So varied are these wines in terms of region and grape variety that it’s difficult to make a generalisation about wine matching, other than to focus on what kind of food unoaked Italian wines might successfully pair with in comparison with oaked wines.

By and large they’re younger, lower in alcohol and less expensive than their oaked counterparts – more for everyday or at least relaxed weekend drinking than fine dining.

In regions such as Tuscany, where red wine is predominantly an unoaked wine, it often takes the place of a white – the go-to with a homely chickpea and rosemary soup, for example, or a simple plate of pasta before moving on to a more serious wine with the meat.

Pizza is another obvious option, which isn’t to diminish these wines – it’s an underrated foil for a simple, well-made red.

With their typically pronounced acidity, unoaked reds are a natural match for salumi and, perhaps less obviously, for fish. There’s no reason why you can’t drink a light Sicilian red such as Frappato with pasta con le sarde (with sardines), for instance, or a Bardolino with some garlicky grilled prawns.

See all notes and scores from the unoaked Italian reds tasting

The judges

Unoaked Italian reds panel tasting results:

Wines were tasted blind

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We are standing on the panoramic terrace of the tasting room of the Borgo Maragliano winery in Loazzolo, in the Alta Langa.

The Galliano family have produced Moscato here for three generations. They began to plant Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the early 1980s, and were among the first of the new generation of ground-breaking metodo classico producers in the Langhe area of Piedmont.

The cellars are at 450 metres above sea level, while the average elevation of the vineyards spread out below us in a patchwork of vines, pastures and woodland is around 400m.

Carlo Galliano points to a plot which has been cleared on a hillside high above us, on the opposite side of the valley.

‘It’s at 600m,’ he explains. ‘The soils are perfect for Pinot Noir, but my father would never have planted a vineyard at that height. It would never have ripened. But today with the climate we have, it’s different. I’m going to be planting there in the spring.’

Taking advantage

When the production norms for the Alta Langa DOC (later DOCG) were drawn up in 2002, they stipulated that the wine had to be sourced from vineyards at above 250m.

Today the producers’ consorzio estimates that the average elevation is between 400 and 550m, although many growers are exploiting the opportunity offered by a changing climate to plant much higher – on sites where the grapes tick all the boxes for sparkling wine production; intense aroma, high acidity and low sugar.

When the Rivetti family acquired the historic house of Contratto in 2011, they planted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir dedicated to Alta Langa sparkling wine at between 700m and 820m.

And when Sara Vezza from the Josetta Saffirio winery at Monforte embarked on a production of her metodo classico, she planted on virgin soils at 700m at Murazzano, in an area of high pastures renowned for its cheeses and certainly not in the past for its wines.

It will be interesting to see how the arrival of viticulture will impact these often isolated rural sites in the future.

Italian metodo classico: A brief history

When it comes to metodo classico wines, Alta Langa is very much the new player on the block.

The three other major Italian DOCs for bottle re-fermented wines all arrived much earlier: Trento DOC dates from 1993, Oltre Po from 1970, and Franciacorta from 1967.

Yet production of metodo classico is not new to Piedmont – in 1850, following studies in Reims, Carlo Gancia founded the house of Gancia at Canelli.

Adapting the French system of bottle re-fermention using the local grape Moscato, he produced what is documented as Italy’s first traditional method sparkling wine.

Other historic houses including Calissano, Contratto and Cora followed suit, adding sparkling wines to the flourishing production of Vermouth of the period, emulating Champagne not only in the production method but also in the flamboyant liberty-style advertising posters which have become collectors’ items.

But then it all died away.

Fast forward to 1990, and a group of seven major Piedmontese houses launched a project to recreate the production of prestige metodo classico, which had been lost in the region.

In what would make an interesting case study in entrepreneurial initiative, the project started from zero, with experimental plantings of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and by 1996, there were 48 hectares under vine.

The name Alta Langa was registered in 1998, and the following year the first wines were released.

The producers’ consorzio was founded in 2001, and in record time, DOC recognition arrived in 2002 for the new sparkling wine.

Building an identity

To create a distinctive identity for the new Alta Langa denomination, the production regulations drawn up in 2002 set the bar high.

To begin with, the base must be Chardonnay and/or Pinot Noir, used individually or in combination.

There is no non-vintage version – Alta Langa is exclusively ‘millesimato’ – and it must age on its lees for a minimum of 30 months (36 months for the Riserva; this will increase to 60 months when the latest modifications to the regulations come into effect).

The potential area of production for Alta Langa is vast, taking in 149 villages in the three wine growing provinces of Alessandria, Asti and Cuneo.

But currently, only 600ha are registered. To put that in perspective, Barbaresco has around 750ha registered.

Calcareous marl soils predominate, with varying textures depending on the percentage of clay to sand.

Production is limited but growing, with projections for the 2025 total of two million bottles to increase to five million by 2030.

Two great Piedmontese traditions are reflected in the cross-section of Alta Langa producers.

On one hand, there are the long-established sparkling wine and Vermouth houses like Cocchi, Coppi, Contratto and Gancia; on the other hand, small- to medium-scale family-run estates.

Many famous names from the red wine denominations of the Langhe have added Alta Langa to their lists, as have Moscato producers from Asti.

The Alta Langa style

If Trento DOC is all about crisp elegance, and Franciacorta round complexity, Alta Langa offers structure and depth.

The absence of an entry level non-vintage label, combined with extended ageing, are distinguishing features accentuated by the orientation of many producers towards the driest pas dosé (equivalent to brut nature) and extra brut styles.

These styles are not always the most accessible, however, and blanc de noir bottlings in particular can feel very dry indeed, and undeniably Piedmontese: austere, long-lived, and great with food.

10 top Alta Langa for your glass

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There is no doubt that Nebbiolo is responsible for some of Italy’s most extraordinary, complex and age-worthy wines.

In fact, Barolo and Barbaresco sit alongside the greats of Bordeaux and Burgundy. Yet unlike Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo has only recently started emerging from the shadow of its loftiest denominations.

In true Nebbiolo form, it is doing so with grace and agility. This is a testament to producers who are emphasising its more lighthearted guises without denaturing its identity.

They align brilliantly with a growing demand for fresh, buoyant, immediately approachable reds.

Fresh batch

While not limited to Langhe Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo d’Alba, these DOCs offer a wealth of examples.

The freshest batch hails from 2023 and 2024, two challenging years. The former was marked by hail, heat and drought, the latter by incessant rainfall – though not cool temperature.

Quite surprisingly, they yielded a spate of charming, lithesome wines – particularly 2024.

The brightest even convey a joyfulness that contradicts what winegrowers must have felt when dealing with the vengeances of Mother Nature.

Alas, in others, the struggles of the vintages are all too apparent.

Both years required a lot of work in the vineyard and a strict selection. As such, it is difficult to find true quality at the lowest prices.

Grower-led value

Nonetheless, trusted producers like Produttori del Barbaresco, Massolino and GD Vajra still offer affordable worthwhile specimens.

What stands out is the intentionality behind the wines. At the Marrone estate, Langhe Nebbiolo is not simply a declassified Barolo.

Instead, winemaker Valentina Marrone set out specifically to produce one that represents her generation. The unoaked, ‘Che Vale’ bottling is chillable and ready to drink.

‘Making a Nebbiolo that isn’t aged in wood requires managing the vineyard differently,’ says Valentina. She also plays around with vinification to tease out the variety's perfume and flavour, as well as finer tannins.

Room for experimentation

That sense of experimentation pervades these non-DOCG Nebbiolo. They also provide rich hunting ground for the region’s up-and-comers.

Check out San Barnaba, Borgogno e Carbone and Vaira Aurelj. While the latter’s fuori zona (FZ) label is neither a Langhe Nebbiolo nor a Nebbiolo d’Alba, it is a 100% Nebbiolo simply designated as Vino Rosso.

The 2023 is the best wine I have had from this promising new estate.

‘We were brought up in Barolo and respect the area but as this comes from outside the zone, we wanted to do something different,’ explains Francesco Vaira, who uses a combination of whole clusters, whole berries and low sulphur to really bring out a perfumed fruit expression.

None of these should take away from the region’s more traditional, even historic labels.

Both Bruno Giacosa and Sandrone’s bottlings from Roero’s renowned Valmaggiore vineyard rise above the challenges of the 2023 vintage.

Similarly, Cavallotto and Giovanni Rosso’s Ester Canale are compelling representations of young vines in Barolo’s best sites.

Nebbiolo is finally having a moment – one that will hopefully have the longevity of its greatest examples.

Juicy and light-hearted Nebbiolo

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If 2022 was a paradox, Barbaresco’s 2023 vintage was a rollercoaster. The unexpected twists and switches left winegrowers as exhausted as perplexed. ‘Every month brought a different challenge’, recalls Roberta Ceretto.

The drought of 2022 carried over into 2023, and by March, the Tanaro River had almost dried out (see lead image). When the rain finally returned at the end of April, it didn’t let up until mid-June.

In another hairpin turn, summer arrived suddenly with soaring temperatures and barely another drop of rain until the end of August. And rather than droplets, the intense water bomb didn’t let up for two days. Temperatures somewhat abated afterward but remained above average throughout September.

While the wet spring meant peronospora (downy mildew) was a constant threat, wineries were quite happy to see water reserves replenished.

‘All the nutrition in the soil that the plant couldn't absorb in 2022 and 2021, it sucked up with the rain in 2023,’ explains Gaia Gaja.

Much more worrisome was the heatwave, bringing unprecedented temperature spikes in the second half of August. ‘It reached 42℃,” asserts Pierguido Busso, who noted issues not just with dehydration but also sunburn.

At Gaja, girapoggio – or horizontally planted rows – suffered the most damage. ‘Bunches on the west side had to be dropped,’ Gaia states. She admits that she didn’t like the wines immediately after fermentation. ‘I was concerned about unripe, green notes but they improved in the barrel’.

Besides using protective measures such as kaolin on the bunches and hail nets for shade, the estate recently started planting native trees in key vineyards like Sorì San Lorenzo. ‘Maybe in 10 years they will provide enough shade and we won’t need nets’, Gaia posits.

Unsurprisingly, the vines shut down in the summer of 2023, and unlike 2022, harvest ended up being quite late.

Deciding when to pick proved difficult. ‘The grapes went from green to overripe quickly’, says David Fletcher, adding that southern exposures struggled the most. At Poderi Colla, Federica Colla describes the difficult harvest: ‘We had to make three passages in the same vineyard as bunches ripened at different times’.

End of an era

Choosing a favourite at Produttori del Barbaresco is like splitting hairs. All nine bottlings are cellarworthy, with clearly defined personalities.

Perhaps the most surprising this year was the Montefico, which showed more vigour than usual without sacrificing its signature mineral nuance.

My tasting at this historic cooperative was bittersweet, as it was the last with Aldo Vacca: after more than 30 years as managing director, he is retiring.

Besides being a steadfast leader at the winery, he was a tireless ambassador for Barbaresco, and I am personally indebted to him for much of what I have learned about the region.

Vacca leaves big shoes to fill, but his long-time right-hand, Luca Cravanzola has stepped confidently into the position – yet another changing of the guard that is shaping Barbaresco’s bright future.

The vintage comparison

After skipping 2022 altogether, Sottimano returns with a complete lineup of single-MGA bottlings. ‘2023 is 10 steps beyond 2022,’ declares Andrea Sottimano.

Conversely, Lena Oddero at Luigi Oddero favours 2022, referring to the 2023 Barbaresco as ‘Nebbiolino’ – little Nebbiolo.

‘The wines are ripe but not structured’, adds the estate’s winemaker, Francesco Versio. He describes 2023 as fresher and more vertical than 2022, because lower potassium levels resulted in more stable acidities.

Indeed, the 2023s tend to be markedly pale in colour, midweight and delicate in structure. Yet they are charming and balanced in their proportions, with ripe but not rich or confected flavours.

Some veer towards Langhe Nebbiolo in style, but with a bit more heft. My preference is for those wines not weighed down by overt wood, and I am pleased to see fewer faulty wines than in 2022.

Barbaresco: Top value picks

Bosio, Boschi dei Signori, Barbaresco 2023

When you have a midweek craving for Barbaresco, Boschi dei Signori offers an accessibly priced example.

Cà del Baio, Barbaresco Asili 2023

From one of Barbaresco’s most prestigious MGAs, Cà del Baio’s represents an excellent price-quality rapport.

Marchesi di Barolo, Barbaresco Serragrilli 2023

This pulls off both ripeness and restraint in one elegant, ready to drink package.

Produttori del Barbaresco, Barbaresco 2022

One of the best deals in Barbaresco year after year, with the 2022 no exception.

Massimo Rivetti, Barbaresco 2022

Not just well priced, this Barbaresco is packed with flavour – and certified organic to boot.

Barbaresco 2023: A commune by commune analysis

My wine of the vintage

Which Barbaresco to drink when?

Barbaresco releases: Tasted & rated

92 points and under

Barbaresco Riserva 2021

This year also marks the release of the 2021 vintage of Barbaresco Riserva, and the 30 or so wines I tasted underscore the great success of this highly touted vintage.

Along with Marchesi di Grésy’s delicious duo from Martinenga, Rizzi’s elegantly restrained Vigna Boito and Vietti’s perfumed Rabajà came out on top in blind tastings. These can all be tucked away and enjoyed leisurely over the next 15-plus years.

Other special mentions go to Montaribaldi, whose first-ever Marcarini bottling marks the estate’s foray into the Riserva category. Similarly, the up-and-coming Piercarlo Culasso estate has upgraded its single-parcel Faset label as of the 2021 vintage.

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As notoriously difficult as Italian wine is to decipher, the term ‘Riserva’ seems straightforward – it’s widely, and simply, interpreted as ‘better’.

Intrinsic to the history of Italian wine, Riserva is deeply entrenched in the country’s psyche.

As Andrea Farinetti (pictured, below), owner of Borgogno in Barolo, says: ‘It means something rare, limited and set-aside because it’s unique.’

Equally, cautions Brunello di Montalcino producer Biondi-Santi CEO Giampiero Bertolini: ‘Whether this is the case or not is another question.’

The term is also tied to a legal definition controlled by both EU and Italian wine law, which stipulates longer ageing prior to release compared to non-Riserva counterparts (often referred to as annata).

This translates to a minimum total ageing of two years for reds and one for whites.

Convolutions ensue, because exact regulations differ from one denomination to the next.

Mixed messages

The rationale behind the Riserva classification is sound – that the best wines should endure and benefit from extended refinement.

By tradition, rather than ordinance, Riservas have typically corresponded to a special selection, whether it be from old vines, choice vineyard plots or superior barrels singled out during ageing for their greater concentration and structure.

Among Italy’s iconic examples, Giacomo Conterno’s Monfortino Barolo Riserva, Bruno Giacosa’s ‘red label’ Barolo and Barbaresco Riservas, and Biondi-Santi’s Brunello di Montalcino Riserva were historically made only in vintages deemed of the highest quality by the respective estates.

And they still are today. ‘It is very important that the difference between an annata wine and the Riserva is clearly perceivable in sensorial terms as well as in the cultivation and making of the wine,’ Bertolini explains. ‘It can’t just be a wine with longer maturation.’

But theory and practice aren’t always aligned.

At its best, Riserva encompasses some of Italy’s greatest wines, yet the category equally includes its share of disappointing, lacklustre examples.

‘Wines that weren’t selling, that were also not particularly fine, became Riserva just because of the fact they remained in storage,’ says Marchesi Frescobaldi’s president Lamberto Frescobaldi.

Superstar Piedmont consultant Gian Luca Colombo bemoans the tendency of some producers to release a Riserva every year. ‘It misses the meaning of the very concept of Riserva,’ he states.

At Cupano in Montalcino, Tuscany, Andrea Polidoro is even more disillusioned: ‘It is the only option for producers to double the price for the same wine.’

Quality sweet spot

Coming under such criticism, Riserva is faced with an inevitable reckoning.

Eroding its once-exalted status, the denominations of Chianti Classico and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano in Tuscany have both introduced a higher tier: respectively, Gran Selezione and Pieve, relegating Riserva to the middle rung of the quality pyramid (above annata) of these DOCGs.

In Chianti Classico, many wineries argue, conversely, that Gran Selezione has given Riserva a new lease of life.

‘Our historic clientele, as well as new enthusiasts, continue to seek out the Riserva,’ asserts Castello di Monsanto’s Laura Bianchi (pictured, above), who identifies the desirable combination of immediate accessibility with cellaring capacity, as well as an excellent price-quality ratio.

Indeed, Chianti Classico’s Riservas offer a sweet spot for savvy, budget-conscious cellaring.

Nevertheless, the category is somewhat blurred as several of the denomination’s most prominent wineries, including Castell’in Villa and San Giusto a Rentennano, continue to bottle their top Chianti Classico as Riserva rather than Gran Selezione.

Place and time

New categories are indicative of a general evolution in Italian wine labelling.

Most prominent in this regard is the rise of UGAs – geographical subdivisions within an existing denomination.

The trend underscores a shift of emphasis towards identifying a more specific place of origin. In Piedmont, both Barolo and Barbaresco have well-entrenched systems of this type.

Sixth-generation Davide Abbona at Marchesi di Barolo distinguishes these bottlings with respect to Riserva. ‘They are two different yet complementary interpretations within the same denomination,’ he says.

The idea behind UGAs is to highlight diversity of territory at the regional level, whereas Riserva is typically an individual estate’s stylistic expression linked to time. ‘It requires patience and attention to reach its maximum expression,’ Abbona says of the latter.

Crucially, UGAs aren’t an indication of a higher level of quality, although some estates do choose to bottle their top site’s wine as a Riserva; essentially one denomination or categorisation reinforcing the other.

Expanded offerings

In Tuscany, Montalcino has resisted carving up its territory into smaller official sub-zones.

Nevertheless, it has seen a boom in site-specific Brunello, such as Cortonesi’s La Mannella and Poggiarelli bottlings, or San Polo’s Podernovi.

This route offers an opportunity for wineries to expand their offerings beyond Riserva, as well as another channel for those who have misgivings about it.

‘It makes sense for historical wineries to make a Riserva, but for a young winery it is hard to speak about tradition,’ says up-and-comer Tommaso Squarcia at Castello Tricerchi.

He favours the single-vineyard approach ‘because you can justify making the wine every year’.

The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

Frescobaldi-owned estate CastelGiocondo’s Ripe al Convento is among the Brunello Riserva that come from a single site. ‘Abroad, the indication of the vineyard is more important than the term Riserva,’ asserts Lamberto Frescobaldi.

In Italy, however, he notes that having both elements in the name reinforces the prestige of a wine such as Brunello.

Giles Burke-Gaffney, fine wine director at London-based merchant Justerini & Brooks, echoes Frescobaldi’s sentiments: ‘The term Riserva resonates very little with our customers.’

He points instead to region, commune, producer and vintage all having more significant influences on purchasing decisions.

For Winetraders UK owner Michael Palij MW, the allure depends on the specific denomination. ‘I have never seen any demand for Riserva outside Chianti Classico, Brunello and Barolo,’ he asserts. ‘Taurasi? Even Amarone? Not a chance!’

Level of achievement

But it isn’t all bad news for Riserva. At Berry Bros & Rudd, Barbara Drew MW identifies the sway of brand loyalty.

‘Passionate fans of a particular producer will generally buy that producer’s Riserva wines along with the rest of their range,’ she says, adding that they’ll happily pay the premium to do so.

Herein lies the crux of the matter.

A Riserva is only as reliable as the producer that makes it. Above all, for a Riserva to be truly relevant, it must embody the spirit, not just the letter, of the law.

Those that do may find their way to the upper echelons of Italian wine; however, they don’t stand alone at the top.

Rather, they are joined by UGA and single-vineyard bottlings that eschew the designation, as well as the more broadly defined IGT category, the best of Chianti Classico Gran Selezione and the like.

True to Italian form, it’s complex to say the least.

The Morris pick: Four definitive Italian Riserva wines

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Barolo’s latest Riserva releases hail from the warm and docile 2020 vintage.

Like their annata counterparts, the wines exude a supple graciousness: even when they are backed with greater structure, the tannins generally remain sumptuous and velvety.

Overall, I found immediate harmony and instant enjoyment. Most should show their best over the next 10 to 15 years, doling out their generous pleasures steadily throughout this window. The choice is personal, of course, whether you prefer youthful charm or tertiary intricacies.

Most gratifying of all is the sense of intention behind these wines in 2020. While the Riserva category has become somewhat diluted throughout Italy, Barolo still manages to convey its original intent.

And even in this more approachable vintage, top bottlings like Bruno Giacosa’s Vigna Le Rocche Falletto, Massolino’s Vignarionda, and Palladino’s San Berardino encapsulate longevity and completeness.

With a trio of new Riserva, the historic Borgogno estate embraces the prevailing approach, which highlights single MGAs. Specifically, they are made from old-vine plots in Annunziata, Cannubi and Liste. The latter gets my top vote in 2020.

Standing the test of time

Beyond the 2020s, there are several late-release Riservas worth seeking out.

Always a year behind, Cavallotto proposes an excellent ageworthy duo from 2019 with the Vignolo and Vigna San Giuseppe bottlings.

From the same vintage, Pecchenino comes out with its first Riserva since 2011.

‘Riserva is not a shortcut to raise prices,’ declares Giacomo Conterno at Aldo Conterno. ‘Instead, it must be a flagship that evokes place – a message in a bottle.’

Some wineries, including Aldo Conterno, Parusso and Vite Colte, choose to wait a full 10 years from harvest before releasing their Riserva, and these latest offerings revisit the exceptional 2016 vintage.

Aldo Conterno’s 2016 Gran Bussia is not an inexpensive missive to say the least, but it is certainly a Riserva that will stand the test of time.

Which Riserva to drink when?

Barolo Riserva 2020: Tasted & rated

In vintage order, highest score first

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Barolo’s best value in 2022 is found among its blends.

Whether a region-wide or a village blend (as opposed to the single-MGA and even single-vineyard bottlings), these so-called ‘classic’ Barolos represent a sweet spot for the vintage.

The majority of wines in 2022 are round in shape with harmonising acidity and well managed tannins, and less complexity than in the best years.

This more approachable style works to the advantage of those after well priced Barolo, with a number of well performing wines to highlight below.

Barolo 2022's top value picks

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When I visited Barolo in early May of 2022, scrawny plants on dusty, arid soil were barely noticeable amid the equally scraggly cover crop.

By the end of the season, many vines hadn’t even reached the top of the trellis, which is almost inconceivable for the notoriously vigorous Nebbiolo.

Drought reached hyperbolic levels and the summer heat was relentless. For a region that is well versed in dealing with rain, the severe lack of it was disconcerting.

‘It forced me to rethink my farming,’ recalls Gianluca Colombo, who abandoned the region’s traditional viticultural practices and adopted the farming approaches of more southern, Mediterranean climes.

‘2022 was an exception in the worst possible way,’ says Carlotta Rinaldi. Yet the vines’ resilience was astounding: ‘From the beginning, they tried to preserve energy and limit production’, she continues.

Tools in the armoury

Drawing on lessons learned in vintages such as 2003, 2007 and 2017, green harvesting was minimal at most. Likewise, many estates avoided de-leafing and hedging, and allowed lateral shoots to grow for additional shade.

‘We left the vines in peace’, concludes Chiara Boschis.

Beyond managing the canopy to shade the grapes, producers such as Poderi e Cantine Oddero and Brovia applied kaolin (a powdery white clay) to act as a natural sunscreen for the bunches.

Anti-hail nets were also credited with curbing sunburn, providing much-needed shade. Paolo Scavino launched the first trials with automated nets developed specifically for sun protection.

Among the few estates with access to water, the family also experimented with irrigation since special permission had been granted for emergency use; a hot and divisive topic to say the least.

And in many cases, inter-row cover crops were left in situ, helping to prevent the soils from losing precious moisture, and to keep the ground as cool as possible.

Yet, inevitably, vines shut down due to heat stress in 2022, particularly those on sandier soils. ‘The heat and drought actually slowed down phenolic ripening, but not sugar levels,’ notes Alberto Cordero di Montezemolo.

Nevertheless, harvest was still early across the board – while some picked long before the rain which arrived at the end of September, others, including Alan Maley at Margherita Otto waited.

‘Those days of rain made all the difference. It was like putting gas in the car.’ Maley also noted a reduction in potential alcohol from 15.2% before to 14.2% after.

Throwing out the rule book

Yields were down anywhere from 20% to 45% but grapes were healthy. Despite small, concentrated berries with thick skins, tannin ripeness was a niggling concern.

The challenge, therefore, was to fine-tune the concentration and avoid over- or under-extraction.

‘It made it difficult to colour inside the lines’, describes Giacomo Conterno.

So again, wineries threw out the rules they were weaned on. Lower fermentation temperatures, gentler pump overs, shorter time on the skins, and avoiding submerged cap macerations were some of the ways winemakers sought to achieve balance.

Several reduced the time in wood, too, in order ‘to preserve freshness’, as Colombo puts it.

As extreme as the 2022 vintage in Barolo was, this does not translate into the wines and I am pleasantly surprised by their fragrance and fruit expression.

Heterogenous in quality, some veer towards confection, though are rarely stewed. Those that fall short are washed out and lacking through the mid-palate.

Conversely, the best wines defy the vintage without disassociating from it, offering depth and definition.

The majority of wines are round in body with harmonising rather than bracing acidity. The tannins are well managed, if less complex and intricate than in great years. And when a bit of dryness does poke through, I appreciate the reminder that I am drinking Nebbiolo!

‘We worried they would be heavy and cloying, but they have much more spunk than we expected,’ remarks Alessandro Olocco at Palladino.

Many found it impossible to single out a comparable vintage, though 2020 was repeatedly cited in terms of the wines’ generous and open nature. ‘There is richness, power and warmth – but not like 2003, which is already dead,’ notes Silvia Altare.

Martina Fiorino at Bruna Grimaldi describes the tannins in 2022 as ‘more resolved and integrated’, compared to 2017.

To blend or not to blend

While 2022 isn’t a vintage to seek out definitive site-specific examples, it does present a compelling case for the time-honoured tradition of blending. But the underlying rationale is different from the cooler climate of yesteryear.

‘In hot years, the vineyards start to resemble one another’, asserts Fabio Alessandria at GB Burlotto. As such, he opted to forego his single-MGA bottlings to produce just one Barolo that incorporates all.

‘Splitting it into three labels would have left too little wine,’ adds Cordero di Montezemolo, explaining that they excluded lots that didn’t meet their usual high standards.

‘Not every vintage is suited for expressing the individual MGAs,’ he continues, ‘but that does not mean the vintage is bad or of lower quality.’

In general, the ‘classic’ Barolos represent a sweet spot for the vintage. Bartolo Mascarello’s remains the standard-bearer but I was also duly impressed with Chiara Boschis’ Via Nuova, Margherita Otto, Pio Cesare and Vietti among others.

There are many successes among the MGA bottlings too. Both Lorenzo Scavino at Azelia and Milena Viara at GD Vajra attribute the quality of theirs in 2022 to the old vines: ‘Even in a difficult vintage, they still speak of where they are from,’ Vaira argues.

My wine of the vintage

2022 vintage conclusions

In 2022 there are plenty of very good wines, but few truly outstanding and distinctive ones. The best convey a visceral connection to the against-all odds vintage.

Most are ready or nearly ready to drink, with an ageing potential between 10 to 12 years. Some will be even longer lived, but only a very few bottles will require extended cellaring.

At the risk of distracting from 2022, my recommendations also include several late-release 2021s.

Missing out on these would be a shame. Topping my list is Guido Porro’s Vignarionda MGA, with the estate’s Vigna Lazzairasco making for a shrewd sidestep.

Also pulling a solid one-two punch is Aurelio Settimo with the striking Rocche dell'Annunziata MGA and excellent value classic Barolo.

Beyond these, Marcarini’s Brunate is a testament to this prestigious MGA, and Le Strette’s Bergera-Pezzole MGA gives insight into Novello beyond Ravera.

I just hope your appetite – or rather thirst – for Barolo in all its variations is as big as mine!

Barolo 2022: A commune by commune analysis

Barolo 2022: Tasted & rated

Score table: 94 points and under

Barolo 2021 late releases

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Tenuta San Leonardo occupies the site of a medieval monastery on the floor of the Trentino valley, the corridor which links Veneto with Alto Adige.

Known for its flagship red, which, unusually, includes Carmenere alongside Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, San Leonardo's estate has been home to the Guerrieri Gonzaga family for the last 300 years.

Surrounded by woodland and dotted with vineyards, the jewel in the crown of the estate is the impressive garden maintained by the family and attached to the 19th century Villa Gresti, which serves as the family home.

It was at the recent launch of the new 2021 vintage of San Leonardo in Palazzo Taverna in Rome, that the link between nature and wine, light and shade, became apparent.

As the evening unfolded beneath gilded chandeliers, Caravaggio-esque paintings and Flemish tapestries, leading Italian artist Chiara Camoni presented Spiritelli di Terra e Vegetazione (‘Sprites of Earth and Vegetation’) as part of the estate's ‘Arte a San Leonardo’ project (see boxout below).

Light and shade

Situated at the southern reaches of the mountainous Trentino region, San Leonardo is defined by its alpine energy.

Even in the scorching vintages of the past decade, it has retained a sleek, finesse-driven style.

In Rome, Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga commented: ‘2021 was an outstanding, eagerly anticipated vintage across Italy. At San Leonardo, it was a year of extraordinary light – and that matters, because we are in a narrow valley where the sunlight isn’t always direct.

‘Looking back over 40 years of records, we recognise that light – distinct from heat – is the foundation of great vintages.’

Already fairly expressive, this newly released 2021 vintage will please those drawn to fresher styles straight out of the gate, yet Anselmo maintains it has a long life ahead.

‘The 2021 is a marathon runner,’ he explains. ‘Perhaps it will last a little less than legendary vintages like 1988 but we expect it to drink well for forty years or more.’

The highly acclaimed 2019 is 2021’s most natural benchmark: similar in depth, though even tighter and aromatically more reserved, reflecting a slightly cooler season.

Only time will tell which of these two great vintages will ultimately prove superior, yet there is little reason to doubt that 2021 ranks among the most complete and cellar-worthy San Leonardo releases in recent years.

A taste of San Leonardo: The new 2021 vintage

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For any wine region to be great, it needs a simple name. Just look at Bordeaux. Given its 65 appellations, having this one name is quite convenient as trying to remember all of them, save for a few of the most famous, is a tedious proposition.

The same can be said for Burgundy, the Rhône, Napa or a multitude of famous regions the world over. This is what makes the proposition of the ‘North Adriatic’ so appealing.

It’s a convenient shorthand for not just a very wide group of appellations, but also parts of three different countries, including northeast Italy and the western parts of Slovenia and Croatia.

When Paul Balke, author of the book North Adriatic, contacted me about a trip he was planning that grouped all of these regions into one much more digestible whole, I thought it a splendid idea.

I’ve been tasting them individually for nearly two decades and hadn’t really considered the fact that they are, to any wine drinker, far more comprehensible via this collective nomenclature.

While at first glance it may appear that this spaghetti of borders, rivers and small mountains has no cohesion, there are several aspects that bind it all together.

And, given that Croatia entered into the Schengen and Eurozone at the start of 2023, imagining that there is any kind of separation at all seems more artificial than the separation that was.

First and most important is the Italianate nature to everything. In ancient history this was all Roman, and in later history it was all Venetian.

It’s only during the last century that things have become a great deal more complicated, especially after World War II.

Despite this, almost everyone who isn’t Italian (namely Slovenes and Croats) does also speak Italian.

While this shared language and history is what we see on the surface, below there’s a vast stretch of flysch (charmingly known locally as ponca/opoka in Italian/Slovenian), a sedimentary mix of sandstone and marl that links the geology of the region.

Linked by separation

This novel new way to look at the region essentially has Trieste in Italy’s far northeast as its focus point and city, with Venice serving as the western flank and Rijeka, Croatia, as the eastern.

It would be easy to get bogged down in finite details across these various lands, of which there are 15 zones.

However, there are two core regions to the north and south that are the most important, as they both produce some of the most exciting wines: Colli Orientali/Collio/Goriška Brda straddling Italy and Slovenia; and Istria, which is mostly in Croatia, with a smaller northern segment in Slovenia and the smallest scrap just to the south of Trieste.

These two North Adriatic sub-regions perfectly embody a spirit of being ‘apart yet together’.

Prior to the imposition of the new border in 1947, Collio and Brda formed a single, coherent wine region, with the same flysch soils extending west into Colli Orientali.

Anyone wandering through these hills today could potentially cross the remnants of old, now-obsolete borders several times in a single day without noticing any real difference – aside from the reversed order of the bilingual village signs and the shared tourism branding of Collio Brda, marked by small shelters dotted across the region, ready for a selfie.

Split identities

Along these hills, one will find undulating waves of vines and, while both red and white varieties are planted, what’s most notable are the vines of Ribolla Gialla/Rebula.

While not planted as much as in the past, there has been a renewal in the last 20 years, with the wines ranging from a fresher style to full-on skin-contact orange, to sparkling wines that are really pleasing these days, such as the Kristalvin, Rebula Extra Brut.

The still wine producers – such as Movia or newcomers such as Ferdinand, both in Brda – are also excellent locales to visit.

Movia especially seems to have a steady stream of visitors, which should come as no surprise given the view from the terrace of the cellar.

While there is plenty of Ribolla Gialla in Collio, the Italian part of this common area, it’s with Friulano where producers seem to be excelling, especially from the likes of Renato Keber or Castello di Spessa.

There’s something of a branding issue with this white grape, however, given that it can be found labelled as Tocai (a name that had to be changed under EU regulations, due to its confusion with Hungary’s Tokaji – the luxurious sweet wine made mostly from the Furmint grape), as well as Friulano, Sauvignonasse and the particularly confusing Zeleni Sauvignon.

To the point of Istria

It’s difficult to leave the hills of Collio/Goriška Brda (a feeling I know well from many trips), but there’s much more to see in the North Adriatic region.

One can go west to regions that are much more plaindriven, especially in Friuli – the zones of Grave, Isonzo or Colli Orientali. In Friuli Grave, Udine is a lovely Italian city to visit, too; and, 10km to its east, the very historic town of Cividale del Friuli is a necessary stop.

Or you can head east, deep into Slovenia, winding along the 70km of the Vipava valley, with grapevines on the valley floor, castles high above on the hills and, higher still, the rocky Karst plateau, which is shared by Italy and Slovenia.

But once you pass through Vipava and follow the rear side of Trieste – a wooded world away from the busy Italian city and port – you arrive at the Istrian peninsula, which, like Collio and Brda, was a single contiguous region prior to World War II.

Wherever you are in Istria – from its Italian sliver at the northern end to Slovenia’s 43km of coastline and the vast bulk of land in modern Croatia – you’re far better off pulling back from the coast by some 10km or so.

The historic presence of Venice is clear in the lovely towns of Piran in Slovenia and Rovinj in Croatia, while the unmistakable imprint of the Romans is apparent in Pula at the tip of the peninsula.

Large-scale tourism, too, has left its mark along the entire coastline. This, however, is nothing new and, as such, the interior was long developed as a destination for boutique hotels, fine food and, of course, very, very good wines.

Both the flysch soils from the north and the Italian language continue into Istria.

In fact, schools in Croatia are bilingual, as are the street signs, and the local Croatian language is markedly different – more sing-song and melodic when compared with that spoken in the country’s capital Zagreb.

Heart of the peninsula

While roughly half of Istria is planted with vines, the most serious production and winery focus lies in the northwestern areas of Croatian Istria and, at slightly lower altitudes, in neighbouring parts of Slovenia.

Conveniently, this overlaps perfectly with the most scenic, postcard-ready parts of Istria, including the villages of Brtonigla, Buje, Grožnjan, Oprtalj and, perhaps most famously of all, Motovun.

Running around the bases of the hilltops these villages call home is an endless parade of vines. Istria is also refreshingly easy to understand from a grape variety point of view.

There are, broadly speaking, two principal grapes: the white Malvazija Istarska, and the red Teran (Terrano in Italy, Refošk in Slovenia – though the latter may be a close relative, rather than exactly the same variety).

Despite this shared varietal base, the resulting wines can show significant stylistic differences. This is worth noting, as in recent years, producers in Slovenian Istria have leaned more towards natural and low-intervention approaches, as seen at Korenika & Moškon.

This isn’t to say such practices don’t exist further south, but Croatian Istria retains a strong, studied Italian core of winemaking that has a tendency to keep things more tightly controlled.

Teran-based wines from producers such as Coronica and Cattunar rank among the stars of the region’s reds. On the white side, Coronica’s Gran Malvazija, Kozlović’s Santa Lucia and Clai’s Baracija Malvazija are all genuinely world class.

Of course, it would be remiss to focus solely on the wines. Truffles should also be high on the agenda – ideally grated generously over a steak at a fine konoba (a traditional tavern or small restaurant serving regional cuisine) enjoyed with an unparalleled view from the top of Motovun village.

A delicious slice of the Adriatic

Paul Balke proposes that the North Adriatic concept stretches as far as Rijeka and the nearby island of Krk.

There is indeed a shared history across these areas, but they lack the rolling, vineyard-covered hills that seem to define much of the rest of the region.

That said, it remains a sound concept. The core elements of wine, history and, for lack of a better word, an ‘Italian’ style feel broadly contiguous throughout.

Given how difficult it can be for neighbouring wine regions – let alone different countries – to work together in pursuit of a common goal, it may be some time before there’s greater alignment.

Still, for wine lovers who enjoy one part of this region, there is a great deal more to explore and enjoy across the North Adriatic as a whole.

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There is a group of DOC/Gs in the far northeast corner of Piedmont producing Nebbiolo wines against the dramatic backdrop of the Alps.

Gattinara and Ghemme (both DOCGs) are the best known, while Bramaterra along with the microscopic Lessona, Sizzano, Boca and Fara are the others.

Nebbiolo has been grown here for centuries, but in the sub-alpine climate with extreme temperature variations which slow down the vegetative cycle, the variety often struggled to get to full ripeness.

The wines were typically lean, with nervy acidity and bone-dry tannins; intense but rigid.

With time, they acquired complex tertiary aromas – it’s no coincidence that the production regulations impose extended wood and bottle ageing – but they were wines of another era.

The wines of today, meanwhile, present a very different profile. They drink earlier than in the past, with immediate fruit, ripe tannins, and the full spectrum of the wonderful floral-herb-spice aromas of Nebbiolo.

Despite the extra ripeness, they maintain the tangy mineral quality, the acidity, and the moderate alcohol which are all key notes of the terroir.

In an age when 15% abv Barolo is becoming commonplace, these northern Nebbiolos typically reach 13-13.5%, and even in the hottest vintages will rarely go over 14% alcohol

What makes the difference is the climate. The combination of drier summers with increased solar radiation, higher average temperatures, and more frequent temperature peaks creates the risk of accelerated but uneven ripening and wines with lower acidity, unwieldy high alcohol and baked fruit aromas.

But it is not all negative. While some traditional growing areas are feeling the heat, others are enjoying the benefits of a changing climate

Federico Rinolfi, winemaker at the La Piemontina estate in Ghemme explains: ‘Climate zones in Piemonte are shifting north. We now have the meso-climate of the Langhe of the past.’

The result is a shorter vegetative cycle but better, earlier ripening.

‘Nebbiolo used to need more time to ripen’, says Rinolfi. ‘Historically, the harvest went on until late October, now we finish in September.’

It's all in the soil

Local climate variations are minimal, but soil differences are significant – they are one of the historical reasons for the division of an area with just a handful of hectares under vine into no fewer than seven sub-zones.

For instance, Gattinara is the only place in Piedmont, and probably in the world for that matter, where Nebbiolo grows on soils of volcanic origin. It’s a terroir which gives the wines a distinctive minerally twist.

Ghemme and Bramaterra, on the other hand, have glacial-alluvial soils with more clay, giving the wines a rounder, softer character, while the sandy soils of Lessona make for very fine textures and intense floral aromas.

If there is a downside to all this sub-division, it is the scale of production. aAccording to the latest official figures, Gattinara has 94ha of vineyard with a production of fewer than 500,000 bottles. Ghemme has 50ha; Bramaterra 41ha; and Lessona – where production is in effect concentrated in a single estate, just 21ha.

The consequence is that you might have to hunt around for a bottle – but your efforts will be repaid.

A taste of Alto Piemonte: Richard Baudains' top picks

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Barbera may never be as highly regarded as Nebbiolo (the grape that makes Barolo and Barbaresco), but in the Asti province of Piedmont it is the lifeblood of local vintners.

For the past five decades, winemakers here have laboured to improve both the quality and reputation of the grape, with the most ambitious and successful enterprise being the creation of the Nizza DOC – originally a subzone of Barbera d’Asti Superiore – in 2000.

Along with well defined boundaries, what makes the wines of Nizza stand out is that the production regulations stipulate low yields – lower even than for Barbaresco.

‘This means that you typically need an old vineyard that produces less quantity’, explains Stefano Chiarlo, director of the Nizza consorzio.

Compared with Barbera d’Asti, which originates from a much broader area, Stefano Gagliardo of Tenuta Garetto explains that: ‘Nizza tends to show a more consistent profile, with greater structure, density and capacity to evolve, expressing a deeper and more complete interpretation of the Barbera grape.’

Mosaic of soils

While Nizza is still in its adolescent stage, communal differences have emerged.

Gagliardo notes that sandy marl soils are typical in Agliano Terme; these tend to produce wines with ‘aromatic precision, freshness and energy’.

Nizza Monferrato, at the centre of the appellation, shows ‘greater diversity in soils and exposure’, resulting in wines that display greater stylistic differences.

The mosaic of soils from Castelnuovo Calcea combine calcareous marls, clays and sandy components.

Gagliardo says that, ‘the balance between these elements often determines whether a wine leans toward power or elegance'.

A matter of wood

While many Nizza producers formerly matured their wines in barrique for a spicier and more vigorous wine, that approach has largely changed.

At Frasca in Agliano Terme, winemaker Matteo Gerbi uses large oak casks of between 2,500 and 4,500 litres.

He says that these casks are, ‘functional in maturing the tannins and smoothing out the edges, without adding too many tertiary notes that are not in line with my idea of Nizza’.

At Marenco, Andrea Costa uses 500 litre French oak tonneaux for his Zana Riserva; among the most refined of all Nizza wines.

‘We thought this size was the optimum compromise for our Zana wine to fix the tannins and still grant the expression of the fruit,’ he says.

However, there are some Nizza producers that still vinify with smaller oak, most notably Prunotto.

Gianluca Torrengo, oenologist and estate director, explains that the estate’s Nizza Riserva ‘Costamiòle’ – named for the eponymous hill in Agliano Terme – was conceived in 1996 with the idea of ageing the wine in barrique.

‘And that vision remains central to its identity’, he says.

For the 2020 vintage, the wine was aged for approximately 12 months in new French barriques.

Torrengo views the role of barriques as contributing structure, complexity and textural depth, while at the same time preserving the freshness and character of Barbera and allowing the wine’s terroir to remain clearly expressed.

‘In short,’ he explains, ‘barriques for Costamiòle are not a stylistic choice dictated by fashion, but a coherent part of the wine’s history, interpreted today with greater sensitivity and precision.’

How does Nizza compare to Piedmont's other Barbera wines?

Noting the difference between a Barbera d’Asti (or even a Barbera d’Asti Superiore) and a Nizza, Torrengo explains that for the latter, yields are lower, ripening is more complete, and the regulations require longer ageing periods.

These are all factors that he believes provide for greater substance, balance and the ability to evolve over time.

‘While Barbera d’Asti is often defined by immediacy and approachability, Nizza aims for a more ambitious, terroir-driven interpretation, combining the natural energy of the variety with the structure of a serious, ageworthy red wine.’

While the most successful markets for Nizza have been Italy and northern Europe, the wine’s identity is not commonplace in other countries.

‘Unfortunately, it is a relatively young denomination and is not yet very well known’, admits Giovanna Garesio of the eponymous winery.

Chiarlo however, has witnessed impressive growth since 2016, when the 2014 Nizza DOCG wines were first released.

He says: ‘Since it was decided to use the Nizza appellation, starting from 30 producers with 30 labels accounting for less than 300,000 bottles sold, we now have more than 100 producers with more than 200 labels, with just over one million bottles sold, of which 60% are in 40 different markets.

'But there is still much more to do in order to create more confidence and familiarity among wine lovers.’

Tom's six Nizza wines to try:

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Friulano (once referred to as Tocai Friulano) is not the most planted grape in Collio.

In terms of surface area, it has long since been overtaken by Pinot Grigio, which according to the latest figures represents a 25% share of the grapes grown in the DOC.

Friulano, on the other hand, accounts for only 15% of the total, and with its 185 hectares ranks only third in the DOC hierarchy.

However, while it might not stack up the numbers in terms of total surface area, it is the most widely diffused variety – it is the one that every producer has, and the one with which Collio has always identified most closely.

While the Pinot Grigio from Collio travels the world, Friulano is a classic example of what used to be known as a ‘vino tipico’, a wine from a native variety with a long tradition and a distinctive character, but often with the commercial handicap of a predominantly local consumption.

You will find it chalked up on the board of every osteria in the province of Gorizia, but you are less likely to see it on wine lists outside the region.

Market research commissioned by the Collio consorzio in 2025 revealed that 40% of the Italians interviewed had never heard of Friulano, and a further 25% said they recognised the name but were not aware that the wine was produced in the Collio.

Friulano deserves better, because it has all the positives of a ‘vino tipico’: great personality, great sense of place, and producers who make it with passion and commitment.

Friulano's origins

The Italian origins of Friulano are shrouded in mystery, but they are relatively recent.

Little was written about this variety, commonly referred to as ‘Tokaj’ or ‘Tokay’, until the early- to mid-20th century, when it was found growing in the eastern plains of the Veneto and later in the hills of Friuli.

It was only in 1933 that the ampelographer Giovanni Dalmasso proposed the name, ‘Tocai Friulano’, to distinguish it from the Tokaj/Tokay (Friulano) grown in the near-by Veneto (where it is also still grown).

All the texts of the period refer to it as a foreign variety, but none hazard a guess at its origins.

That part of the mystery was resolved in the 1980s by the researchers Antonio Calò and Angelo Costacurta, who discovered that Friulano was none other than the Sauvignonasse or Sauvignon Vert once grown in Bordeaux, but long since abandoned in France.

How it got to Italy, perhaps nobody will ever know.

Style and character

Friulano is a vigorous variety, fairly resistant to most vine diseases, but due to its thin skins is terribly susceptible to harvest-time botrytis in rainy vintages.

It is potentially generous in its yields, and needs to be contained by short pruning and planting on lean hillside sites.

Picked at full ripeness and vinified conventionally, it makes a wine with delicate fruit, floral aromas which recall acacia and lime blossom, and a fingerprint note of bitter almonds.

It tends to have relatively low total acidity and high pH, with medium to high alcohol, all of which combine to give a glossy texture which is balanced by the minerally finish typical of the wines of the Collio.

The variety is very sensitive to location and harvest timing: higher, cooler slopes and earlier picking bring out the fresher, more Sauvignon-like side of its character, while warmer sites favour wines with more richness on the palate.

For the former style, look to producers from villages such as Ruttars and Dolegna; and for the riper, fuller-bodied wines, Capriva and Cormons.

And the perfect balance of the two? Perhaps the hilltop village of San Floriano.

Evolution

Collio is evolving, and Friulano with it. A young generation of producers is coming to the fore, (the newly-elected president of the producers’ consortium, Luca Raccaro, is the youngest ever in the role at 34) bringing with it new ideas.

Some of this change is seen in the new approach to vinification. The use of maceration for shorter or longer periods is increasing and this has prompted the recent decision to introduce the wording ‘Vino da Uve Macerate’ on the label.

The naturally gentle tannins of Friulano make it an ideal candidate for the style.

In another direction, there are producers who are moving to align with contemporary trends, aiming for a more reductive less aromatic style that’s drier, tighter, more mineral, and lower in alcohol.

These examples make a break from the rich and fleshy Friulano of local traditions.

Friulano and friends

But what if Friulano’s true vocation was not as a monovarietal at all, but as a component in a blend of local grapes? In the original DOC of 1968, headline billing was given to Collio Bianco – or simply Collio – a blend of Friulano with fellow native varieties Ribolla Gialla and Malvasia Istriana.

This time-honoured combination saw Friulano contribute the body, Ribolla the acidity, and Malvasia the structure and aroma.

The production norms were liberalised in the 1990s to allow producers to use any blend of non-aromatic grapes in a personalised estate wine, which had a logic in the international super-wine context of the period, but sacrificed any sense of place.

Those same norms remain in place today, but there are moves to find a path back to the original formula.

The impetus has come largely from a group of young producers who have agreed a protocol for a traditional blend consisting of a minimum 50% Friulano, complemented by Ribolla and Malvasia, aged for at least 18 months, and labelled with the phrase ‘Da Uve Autoctone’ (From Local Grapes).

The project currently has a dozen adherents, who between them produce between 110,000 and 120,00 bottles, a number which is beginning to give visibility to the group’s instantly recognisable labels.

Whether as a monovarietal or in a blend that highlights the terroir of the Collio, recent tastings confirm that Friulano has the quality and the character to play a leading role in the future of the DOC, not only at local level, but in much wider contexts.

Get a taste for Friulano with these 20 wines

Collio, a strip of land in the far northeastern corner of Italy, a border area, a crossroads of peoples, cultures, history and languages.

Sometimes referred to as Collio Goriziano after its main city, Gorizia, but usually simply called, Collio (and not to be confused with Colli Orientali del Friuli), the region is a key DOC within the broader area of Friuli-Venezia Giuli, and one of Italy’s easternmost wine regions.

Termed the ‘Gorizia garden’ because the producers treat the vineyards as they would their own gardens, Collio is a crescent-shaped hilly area located between the Adriatic Sea to the south and the Julian Alps to the north; bounded by the river Judrio to the west and the Isonzo to the east, with its northern edge comprising the border with Slovenia.

It enjoys an ideal microclimate in terms of ventilation and temperature range, with warm weather influences arising from the Adriatic and the Alps protect from colder weather intruding from the north.

Summers are not too scorchingly hot, nor are winters too bitterly cold.

The area also has a particular soil type: a marly-arenaceous flysch, known locally as ponca. This alternation of sandstone and marl gives the wines their unmistakable characteristics: notable sapidity, structure, freshness and longevity.

A land of white wines

The site of ferocious and bloody battles between the Italians and Austro-Hungarians during the First World War, today the peace and beauty of this unspoilt and authentic landscape is striking. There is no single-crop agriculture among these hills and the view stretches across rivers, mountains, pastures and woods.

The annual ‘Collio Evolution’ event – organised by the Collio producers’ consortium – is a tasting focused on the grape variety Friulano, the denomination’s native grape par excellence.

Collio is a land of white wines (and increasingly skin contact/orange wines as well), 89% of the production area is given over to white varieties.

Friulano is one of the standard bearers, but Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Ribolla Gialla and Malvasia Bianca are also widely planted. What few reds there are tend to be based around Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.

While the region was pivotal in the popular rebirth of Italian white wines more than half a century ago, a subsequent downturn saw the denomination being overtaken by others.

However, Collio has everything it takes to regain its rightful place at the top of Italian white wines. Below are five examples made from Friulano that show what the region has to offer.

Collio: Five to try

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North Italy is a melting pot of cultures and landscapes. Flag-bearers for these northern regions include Barolo and Amarone, but there’s so much more to discover.

And with changes in winemaking and the impact of climate change, new opportunities are opening up for wines which previously languished in the background.

In an interview for Decanter with Tim Atkin MW all the way back in 2010, renowned winemaker Angelo Gaja declared that Italy’s future would lie with white wines.

But one grape variety he omitted to mention was Cortese, the most widely planted dry white variety in Gaja’s native Piedmont.

Let’s start there, therefore, and then look at six other exciting areas in northern Italian winemaking.

Gavi’s renewed ambition

Cortese’s finest expression is in the wines of Gavi and Gavi di Gavi, yet despite healthy sales in both the UK and USA, Gavi has not always been renowned for premium quality.

However, today’s warmer growing conditions combined with a greater belief in the area’s potential, and savvy marketing campaigns are changing all that, and the wines now are far better than they ever been before.

Alto Adige’s flagship white

Though not a native variety – and despite fierce competition – Pinot Bianco (aka Pinot Blanc/Weißburgunder) has become the standout white grape of the Alto Adige, with its magical combination of succulence, freshness and balance.

Versatility is key: whether producing excellent whites for youthful drinking and medium- to long-term ageing, or as the backbone of an increasing number of spectacular local blends, it is the default choice these days.

Decanter World Wine Awards Co-Chair and columnist Andrew Jefford agrees: ‘Nowhere else does Pinot Bianco like the Alto Adige!’

Sauvignon Blanc’s Collio renaissance

Sauvignon Blanc is a highly prized variety in neighbouring Friuli-Venezia Giulia, but the wines haven’t always lived up to their billing.

Rampant thiols (think passion fruit and cat’s pee) have too often obscured the strong sense of terroir typical in areas like the Collio with its distinctive ponca soils (mineral-rich marl and sandstone).

A less intrusive approach to winemaking favouring indigenous yeasts, slightly warmer fermentation temperatures, and careful use of large oak barrels is starting to have the desired effect and we are beginning to see more ripe, silky textures and salty, mineral notes in the finest examples of Collio Sauvignon.

Valpolicella’s fresh face

According to New Generation Valpolicella’s spokesman Piergiovanni Ferrarese of Villa Spinosa, one of the under-40s winemaker group’s main challenges is to lavish the same care and attention on the Valpolicella Superiore category that growers have previously saved for Amarone.

This frequently means dedicating individual vineyards to the production of Superiore, rather than creaming off the pick of the crop for the appassimento process, and using only freshly harvested grapes to make the wine.

Flying in the face of the success that the appassimento-based wines (Amarone and Ripasso) have brought the area, these wines focus on freshness and elegance – the two defining features of the best Valpolicella.

Schiava’s old vines

How gratifying to see a Santa Maddalena (and moreover, one with bottle age) reap a Platinum Medal at the DWWAs in 2025! The grape here is Schiava (aka Vernatsch), as it is for the Lago di Caldaro denomination which also claimed a Value Gold.

While many Schiava vineyards were pulled up in the 1980s to make way for white grapes, those that remain often have very old vines – some over a century old.

Could this much maligned local variety be about to challenge Pinot Nero (Pinot Noir) as Alto Adige’s flagship red? Tastes change and sleek, light, aromatic reds are booming…

Nebbiolo’s Alpine alter ego

While we mainly associate the variety with Piedmont, the notion of Alpine Nebbiolo is gaining traction. Lombardy’s Valtellina remains an underrated and overlooked source of fragrant and elegant reds; the grape, known locally as Chiavennasca, offers the most Pinot Noir-like expression of the Nebbiolo variety.

Though fêted for Sforzato, which like Amarone relies on semi-dried grapes, representative examples from the lesser known denominations of Valtellina Superiore and Valtellina Rosso bring ethereal lightness, finesse and balance associated with Alpine reds to the party.

Add in spectacular, high altitude terraced vineyards with over 2,500 kilometres of dry stone walls and the mystery of why these delightful wines are not more highly sought after only deepens!

Asolo Prosecco’s Extra Bruts

Northern Italy’s most popular wine remains Prosecco. A lot of it is cheap fizz, bought and sold mainly on price, but Asolo Prosecco, for example, is really bucking that trend.

Many of them declare a vintage (versus Prosecco DOC, most of which is non-vintage) and the denomination is pioneering the Extra Brut category with between 0-9g/l of residual sugar – the driest category.

These Proseccos look and taste like the real deal, and growing numbers of estates are regularly achieving exemplary levels of quality. Tasting is believing and, as in Valtellina, the wines are living up to the promise of some outstanding vineyard scenery.

One feature unites these wines: they all share a tremendous sense of place. Great vineyards, attentive winemaking with minimal intervention and a return to the use of larger older, more neutral barrels for ageing are allowing wineries to concentrate on making their products stand out from the crowd.

It’s what makes Italian wine so exciting: its all-embracing diversity, once viewed as a source of confusion, has become its strength.

Get a taste of this year’s trends:

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Piedmont & northern Italy

The northern Italy shortlist for Wines of the Year 2025 was dominated by Barolo; I’ve only picked one however, despite such a strong showing, in order to ensure that other northerly winemaking regions are also represented.

Conterno’s Monfortino Riserva is an object of desire for Barolo lovers, and its lofty reputation is solidified by a perfect score from Michaela Morris, DWWA Regional Chair for Piedmont and author of our Barolo vintage report (see June 2025 issue).

Other high achievers of note this year include GB Burlotto’s epic Monvigliero Barolo 2021 (99 points), and a clutch of impeccable releases from Borgogno, Oddero and Bruno Giacosa; the latter’s Barbarescos were also very impressive, as you may expect from this benchmark producer.

But it is Paitin’s Sorì Paitin Vecchie Vigne Riserva 2020 that claims the spot as the top-scoring Barbaresco of the year – and one of our Wines of the Year. Elsewhere, in the northeast, Terlano’s I Primo 2019 blend is testament to the experience and dedication of winemaker Rudi Kofler.

Despite only having a handful of vintages under its belt – first vintage, 2011 – I Primo has entered the elite top echelon of Italian white wines. Across in Lombardy, Monte Rossa’s Cabochon is a powerful and concentrated Chardonnay-led Franciacorta sparkling which wowed our judges at a panel tasting held in late 2024 (see December 2024 issue).

Lastly, back over in Veneto, Bertani’s Amarone Classico 2015 effortlessly juxtaposes all of the depth and richness of Valpolicella’s flagship style with almost unbelievable levels of elegance.

Tuscany & southern Italy

Strong showings from Montalcino, Chianti Classico and Bolgheri this year made the Tuscan selection for Wines of the Year very tough. Masseto 2006 received my first ever perfect score when I tasted it alongside other vintages at a rare tasting in November 2024, so naturally it had to be included.

Our regular Italy contributor and DWWA Regional Chair for Piedmont Michaela Morris was awestruck by the single-cask Poggio di Sotto Brunello Riserva 2019 – our joint top-scoring Brunello Riserva from the year’s releases – describing it as ‘a masterpiece of proportionality’.

Although we absolutely must recognise the 99pt Cerretalto Brunello di Montalcino 2019 from Casanova di Neri, as well as the 98pt Riservas from Baricci, Biondi-Santi, Fuligni and Il Marroneto.

In the Maremma, coastal southern Tuscany, impressive results are being achieved at Le Pupille following a process of transition as Elisabetta Geppetti’s son Ettore Rizzi brings the winemaking in-house.

He’s taking over from the highly regarded consultant Luca D’Attoma, with whom he worked while he fine-tuned his own craft.

Ettore’s third vintage flying solo is crowned by an absolutely stunning 2022 Saffredi Toscana Rosso. Moving further south, in Sicily we reach Pietradolce’s Barbagalli vineyard on Etna.

For me, this is a bona-fide grand cru, with the consistency, complexity and wow-factor you might expect to find in the finest sites of Burgundy’s Côte de Nuits or Piedmont’s Langhe, combining finesse and structure to great effect.

Our sole white selection this year comes from the island of Sardinia – Siddùra’s Maìa took the top accolade, by a significant margin, at our ‘Tuscany vs Sardinia’ Vermentino panel tasting early in the year (see April 2025 issue), exemplifying the quality inherent in the small DOCG of Vermentino di Gallura when done right.

Wines of the year 2025: Italy

Wines from Piedmont and northern Italy are listed first, then Tuscany and the south

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Umbria is the perfect winter escape: the only landlocked region in Central Italy, its quaint medieval villages acquire an enchanting aura when the air gets crisp while the sun keeps shining. A warming aroma of wood-fired delicacies often drifts through narrow alleys, preluding the cozy embrace of local trattorias and country houses.

While in the past this region was best-known for its whites, especially Orvieto, a bold red for chilly days has taken centre stage over the last two decades: Montefalco Sagrantino.

The red Sagrantino grape is almost exclusively grown within a five-township area centred on the picturesque town of Montefalco, in the heart of the region. Montefalco’s tidy, verdant hills mirror the backdrops of 15th century artworks by masters such as Benozzo Gozzoli and Perugino, still visible in the village church of San Francesco.

Yet Montefalco Sagrantino wines showcase intensity and heft rather than Renaissance-style serenity and poise. Almost extinct in the 1970s due to its hard-to-tame nature, the variety was rescued by the Caprai family of the namesake winery, who discovered that Sagrantino contains some of the highest levels of tannins and polyphenols of any grape anywhere in the world.

A rapid rise

Marco Caprai began conducting clonal selection, improved canopy management, and introduced ageing in small oak barrels, paving the way for the achievement of DOCG status for Sagrantino di Montefalco in 1992 (the name changed to Montefalco Sagrantino in 2009) – and its subsequent revival.

As the demand for brooding, powerful reds boomed from the late 1990s onwards, total plantings soared from only 66 hectares at the moment of the DOCG’s birth to over 380 in 2022 [according to Consorzio vini Montefalco], currently scattered among 65 small- to medium-size producers.

Innovative approaches

Most Sagrantino di Montefalco are deep-coloured, brimming with sweet red and black fruits, spice, chocolate, and distinctive balsamic or botanical touches.

With their high alcohol, noteworthy mid-palate concentration and dusty tannins requiring several years to soften, they convey a sense of warmth and exuberance – sometimes at the expense of finesse and detail.

Yet several producers are striving to achieve greater balance and finesse, often by adopting innovative approaches.

‘Sagrantino can be a beauty and a beast at once’, says Giampaolo Tabarrini, a cult vintner who crafts classically concentrated yet weightless expressions. Tabarrini believes high alcohol from late harvesting is unavoidable in order to obtain full tannic maturity.

Nonetheless, he collaborated with the oenology university of Perugia to create a custom fermentation tank that allows for extremely long and gentle macerations, contributing to an uncanny sense of elegance.

Marco Caprai, meanwhile, has worked together with globetrotting winemaking superstar Michel Rolland to conceive the methode integrale, consisting of a whole-berry fermentation in French oak barrels, also aimed at obtaining a softer texture.

Other producers rely on more conventional winemaking to emphasise the grape’s transparency of terroir. Filippo Antonelli, produces two single-vineyard Sagrantino with very distinct personalities; Chiusa di Pannone and Molino dell’Attone.

The latter represents an especially contemporary take: the schistous, east-oriented parcel shapes a wine that showcases noteworthy refinement and approachability without giving up on Sagrantino’s signature power.

Antonelli says: ‘In Montefalco, there has long been a tendency to make a single super-selection of Sagrantino. Instead, we should focus more on single-vineyard expressions, as different soils and expositions result in diverging profiles.’

A must-have in any serious cellar

Despite remarkable efforts to offer earlier-drinking styles, Sagrantino di Montefalco remains one of Italy’s most cellar-worthy reds.

Between eight and 15 years from its release is enough time for the tannins to soften without totally losing their enticing gripping effect. At this stage, a mix of earthy flavours and rich fruit makes it a perfect match for ground game or red meats seasoned with mushrooms or truffles in a typically Umbrian fashion.

Yet the best Sagrantino di Montefalco can hold up for even longer, entering the vini da meditazione category along with the likes of Amarone, as the high polyphenol content keeps the structure intact while the edges become rounder.

Although finding older vintages outside of cellar shops and a few top-tier restaurants in Italy can be challenging, late-release versions are increasingly widespread. Almost all producers wait longer than the 33 months mandated by the appellation’s regulations, with most examples currently on the market belonging to the 2019 and 2020 vintages.

A few wineries go even further: the 2018 Carapace Lunga Attesa by Tenute Lunelli – a Montefalco estate run by the namesake family of Ferrari Trento fame – is a prime example of ready-to-drink, fireside Sagrantino with a lovely balance between brightness and slowly rising tertiary complexity.

Beyond Sagrantino

Sagrantino isn’t the only key player in Montefalco: roughly two thirds of the appellation’s total production (roughly 35% of Umbria’s total output) are still represented by Montefalco Rosso, the area’s historical Sangiovese-based red with dollops of Sagrantino and other varieties.

While most Montefalco Rosso are simple and meant to offer an affordable alternative to Sagrantino, top-notch renditions like the 2023 Tenute Lunelli Ziggurat and the 2021 Tenuta Bellafonte Maestà Quattro Chiavi Riserva show greater breadth and depth, giving Sangiovese from the coveted Tuscany region a run for their money.

The white Trebbiano Spoletino variety is also on the rise. Tabarrini’s oak-aged 2023 Adarmando and Antonelli’s amphora-aged 2023 Vigna Tonda are just two of several high quality expressions, reflecting the grape’s noteworthy potential, both in terms of complexity and versatility.

As Antonelli says, ‘few areas in Italy excel with both white and reds’ – a testament to Montefalco’s evolving wine landscape.

Cosy up to these six Montefalco Sangrantino:

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Of all the many thousands of wines tasted by Decanter every year, only a small handful ever gain the very highest score of 100.

This year, in fact, a mere 30 wines (tasted between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025) gained that coveted triple-digit score. In the immortal words of Cilla Black, let’s look at what they are and where they come from.

Top-scorers by country

As two countries that feature heavily both online and in print, the bulk of this year’s top-scoring wines came from France and the US.

France had the higher number of 100-point scores by far – 15 wines (50%) versus 12 (40%) from the US – while Italy with two 100-point wines and Australia with just one made up the difference.

Top-scorers by region

Drilling down into the regions things get a little more interesting. We can see that the French wines are split among several regions, with Bordeaux taking the largest share of 100-point wines (nine wines overall or 30% of the total).

However, the largest single region for top scores was California, with 11 wines (36.7%) that received a 100-point score.

The Rhône Valley was the third most-awarded region with five (16.7%) of the top scores, while Western Australia, Burgundy, Oregon, Tuscany and Piedmont all picked up one perfect score apiece.

Top-scorers by appellation

The most-awarded appellation overall was the Napa Valley, which had 10 wines with a 100-point score (mostly from one standout vintage, which was also the case with many of the Bordeaux wines as we’ll explore below).

There were three wines from Châteauneuf-du-Pape as the second highly rated appellation – though probably not wines you would expect – followed by Cornas, Pauillac, Pessac-Léognan, Pomerol and St-Emilion which all had two 100-point scores this past year.

The remaining appellations were Barolo, La Tâche, Margaret River, Margaux, Sonoma County, Toscana, and Willamette Valley with one 100-point wine apiece.

And now let’s briefly look at those wines.

France

Bordeaux

Many of the vintage reports published this year have focused on the very difficult 2024 vintage, which has not yielded many exceptional wines overall.

However, Bordeaux editor Georgie Hindle also reviewed the recently bottled and shipped 2022 vintage from Bordeaux which was a different story altogether.

In her report published in March, she said of the vintage: ‘The 2022s have emerged as wines out to please. As a group they are highly charged and powerful with an impressive amount of fruit, tannins and alcohol, yet they are refined and balanced with a sense of classicism.’

She gave six wines a score of 100-points – three each from the left and right banks.

She also gave a perfect score to the ‘monumental’ 2016 vintage of Château Latour, finally released from the estate’s cellars this spring.

Two wines from the 2015 vintage, Château Margaux and Château Lafleur confirmed in their majesty 10 years on.

Rhône Valley

Matt Walls covers the Rhône extensively for Decanter and this February he wrote about an especially memorable tasting at Château de Beaucastel in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which yielded three 100-point wines.

These were not the estate’s reds though – but rather its ‘masterpiece’ of a white wine, the Roussanne Vieilles Vignes.

Tasted while scenes from Netflix’s Drops of God adaptation were filmed in the background, Walls was thoroughly seduced by what he calls ‘one of France’s greatest Mediterranean whites’, with many high scores given including three digits for three vintages: 2020, 2014 and 1988.

There was room for a couple of top-scoring reds though, notably two 2010 Cornas from Domaine Clape and Vincent Paris, which are among Walls’s favourite vintages from that appellation to drink now.

Burgundy

For a region with such a sterling reputation, there was just one wine that claimed a ‘perfect’ score in 2025. Maybe the standards of expectation from the Côte d’Or are that much higher?

Nonetheless, the unsurprising top-scorer was from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, with the domaine’s La Tâche 2022 getting the seal of approval from Charles Curtis MW during his in-bottle tasting this spring.

US

Napa Valley

Like Bordeaux, the bulk of top scores for Napa Valley this year came from the 2022 vintage, which was also not necessarily a straightforward growing season but from which some true gems have emerged.

Jonathan Cristaldi wrote in his report: ‘Compared to more structured, long-ageing vintages such as 2021 or 2019, the 2022s are approachable, plush and opulent.

‘Tannin structure varies, with some wines showcasing excellent granular grip and ageing potential while others exhibit a smoother, more fruit-driven profile that leans toward early drinking.’

Cristaldi ultimately gave six wines from the 2022 vintage 100 points, alongside another four from the 2021 – giving Napa its rather awesome tally of 10 top-scores this year.

Sonoma and Willamette Valley

The only US wines breaking Napa’s stranglehold on the crown were a Pinot Noir and Chardonnay duo.

In her report on the wines from the Sonoma Coast in 2022 (there’s that vintage again), Ana Carolina Quintela gave 100-points to the Cuvée Elizabeth Pinot Noir from Occidental. A true ‘wow-moment wine’ she noted.

And our North America editor, Clive Pursehouse, awarded his very first 100-point wine to the ‘captivating’ Bethel Heights’ The High Wire Chardonnay 2023 from Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Best of the rest

Italy

A rather diplomatic split of one 100-point score each for Italy’s premier regions of Piedmont and Tuscany this year.

Michaela Morris dished out a top-score to Giacomo Conterno’s Montfortino Riserva 2019 in her review of that newly-released batch of wines.

And Italy editor, James Button, couldn’t help but give 100-points to the ‘impeccably harmonious and long-lived’ 2006 Masseto during a vertical of the Super Tuscan at the start of the year.

Australia

And to wrap things up, while reviewing the wines being released through La Place de Bordeaux this autumn, Hindle gave top marks to the Cloudburst Chardonnay from Margaret River.

She wrote: ‘Round, utterly moreish from the first sip – this is engaging, mouthwatering, alive and so utterly enjoyable. I’d never tire of drinking this wine.’

Decanter’s 100-point wines of 2025:

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‘This is my first 100-point wine after nearly 4,000 in my three years at Decanter’

Few names in Barolo make aficionados’ hearts flutter faster than that of Bussia. Among the earliest of the region’s subdistricts to be identified on wine labels, this year’s 2021 vintage release marks the 60th anniversary of the very first Bussia bottling – from the esteemed Prunotto estate.

Alfredo Prunotto established the estate in 1922 upon buying the ‘Ai Vini delle Langhe’ cooperative, which was on the brink of collapse. He and his wife ran the company until retiring in 1956.

As their children showed no interest in taking over, they sold it to their young winemaker friend – the legendary Beppe Colla.

Having previously worked for the largest grape purchasers in the Langhe, Colla knew exactly where to source the best fruit for his wines.

He was also inspired by his travels to Burgundy: while Barolo was traditionally a blend from vineyards in different locations, Colla introduced a Burgundian model, making single-site wines and labelling them as such.

His approach was revolutionary (and criticised) at the time but eventually became widely adopted, paving the way for the huge diversity of site-specific Barolo we see today. Among the sites Colla chose, Bussia was identified for the quality of its tannins.

Notoriously, the Barolo of Colla’s era required years to soften. ‘With a tendency to sweetness, they [Bussia’s tannins] are very silky almost from the beginning of the wine’s life in bottle,’ notes Gianluca Torrengo, Prunotto’s oenologist since 1999.

‘Beppe considered that accessibility of tannins an added value because it meant not having to wait as long.’

Bussia back then was much smaller than the official MGA of today. It corresponded to the area of Bussia Soprana – an amphitheatre that encompasses the vineyards of Gabutti, Colonnello, Cicala and Romirasco (the latter three made famous by Aldo Conterno) – as well as the neighbouring hill which includes Dardi and Mondoca.

However, when Barolo’s MGAs were legally defined in 2010, Bussia was demarcated as a vast area – approximately 4km as the crow flies.

It now extends all the way from the village of Monforte d’Alba to Castiglione Falletto’s southernmost MGAs of Pugnane and Mariondino; an enlargement that Torrengo explains as bureaucratic, ‘because the name Bussia is also used for a river, a road, a central hamlet and an upper hamlet.’

The next chapter

After managing its distribution since 1989, Antinori acquired Prunotto in 1994. Colla remained at the estate until the transition to Antinori was complete.

Under the guidance of Antinori’s head of winemaking, Renzo Cotarella, the company immediately began buying vineyards, so as not to rely on purchasing fruit.

The first sites purchased were located in Bussia, and today the estate boasts a total of eight hectares of south- to southwest-facing plots in the original nucleus of the MGA.

Piero Antinori’s eldest daughter, Albiera – now president of Antinori – was in her mid-20s when she was tasked with managing the estate. Coming from Tuscany, she recalls that ‘those first few years, we were simply trying to understand’.

Her aim was to walk the tightrope between respecting local tradition and moving forward. ‘We looked for wines that didn’t need 40 years before being drinkable, with a colour that was red rather than rosé.’

This period corresponded with a time when many in the region, including Antinori, were experimenting with everything from more extractive macerations to the use of new French oak barriques.

‘Whether this went too far, I don’t know’, Albiera muses.

A taste of time

Earlier this year, Albiera hosted a tasting of Prunotto’s Bussia at the estate. Spanning six decades, it charted the broader evolution of Barolo – stylistic trends were palpable in the glass.

Although the inaugural 1961 was absent, the lineup did include the exceptional 1978 and almost as outstanding 1985 vintages from Colla’s tenure. Both were thrilling relics of a bygone era.

I couldn’t help being in awe of the 1978. Still vibrant and steely at almost 50 years old, it was impossible to fathom it in its youth. ‘It must have been like drinking lemonade,’ Albiera remarked to me.

The 1978 was also the only Riserva in the roster: until 1983, the Colla family declared almost all their single-site wines as such.

The wines from 1996, 2004 and 2008 represented a transitional phase. Deeper in hue with more volume and bulk, they are ageing less gracefully than the older examples.

While not lacking in flashy charm, the dense, extracted, oak-tinged 2004 was the most illustrative of these extremes, whereas the 2008 suggested an easing up.

Looking ahead

The final three vintages poured – 2016, 2019 and 2021 – demonstrated the direction that Antinori has taken Prunotto after much internal reflection.

In terms of winemaking, extractions are now much gentler, and macerations relatively short (approximately 10 days). French oak is still preferred but the casks are medium to large in size (25 to 75 hectolitres).

‘The last 10 years signify a turning point,’ asserted Cotarella, who was candid about his learning curve with Nebbiolo. ‘Now we are looking to bring depth of flavour without weighing the wine down.’

Indeed, the trio was united by a toned, balletic frame rather than body-builder muscles.

The 2016 struck me as somewhat naïve, though its purity and finesse of tannins were undeniable. Both 2019 and 2021 amplified these attributes, showing greater sophistication and intricacy, particularly in the former.

It remains to be seen if these recent releases will endure as long as their predecessors from the 1970s and 1980s. However, they are clearly poised to offer immense drinking pleasure throughout the arc of their evolution – something that couldn’t necessarily be said about the Barolo of yesteryear.

Prunotto’s Bussia: Tasting back in time

Below, Michaela picks out her six top wines from a tasting which spanned six decades of Prunotto’s Bussia label

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For Austrians and Germans, and a great number of the people who live there, it is the ‘Südtirol’ – the southern province of the Tyrol.

For Italians, it is the ‘Alto Adige’, the Upper Valley of the river Adige.

This bilingual province on the border with Austria is a meeting place of cultures created by the twists and turns of history.

What is now the Trentino-Alto Adige region spent more of the last 200 years of its history under Austrian rule than Italian, and it was only after the defeat of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire in WWI that it was incorporated into Italy.

Not least of the influences of its cultural heritage regard the wine production of this fascinating border area.

Grapes of northern European origin grow alongside international and local varieties; barriques coexist with giant casks with elaborate carved heads; and in many cellars the chief winemaker still retains the title of ‘Kellermeister’.

The wine growing areas of the Alto Adige stretch north from the border with the neighbouring Trentino in the shape of a letter ‘Y’.

The lower part, the Bassa Atesina, follows the valley of the Adige to Bolzano, where viticulture branches northeast into the Isarco Valley towards Bressanone, and northwest past Merano, into the Venosta Valley.

Jigsaw puzzle

The umbrella Alto Adige DOC covers all 5,850 hectares of the province, with important DOC sub-zones for Terlano, Santa Maddalena, Valle Isarco and Val Venosta, while the pale red wines of Caldaro/Kaltersee have a denomination all of their own.

Vineyards stretch from around 250 metres above sea level to the upper slopes of the valley sides, reaching elevations of over 1,000 metres above-sea-level in places.

The climate is sunny, and warmer than you might expect – July temperatures are higher in Bolzano than Palermo! – but with the extreme day/night excursions typical of mountain regions.

The soil map of the province is a highly-coloured jigsaw puzzle which defies close description, but the three basic types are the Dolomitic limestone of the Adige valley, soils of volcanic origin around Bolzano, and the coarse, sandy quartz, slate and mica of weathered native rock in the Isarco and Venosta valleys.

Twenty varieties

Alto Adige grows 20 DOC-recognised varieties, 11 white and five red.

The principle international white grapes, Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Pinot Bianco and Sauvignon, are distributed pretty much across the whole of the province, with characters which respond to the different terroirs.

Pinot Bianco/ Weissburgunder

Of all the international varieties, Pinot Bianco is the one most closely associated with the Alto Adige.

It can be soft and round with yellow apple and floral aromas on the lower slopes of the Bassa Atesina, and intensely dry and minerally in the high vineyards of Appiano and at Terlano, the top two villages for the variety.

Sauvignon Blanc

Similarly, Sauvignon can be rich and fleshy around Caldaro, and crisp and zingy at Cortaccia and in the Val Venosta.

Gewürztraminer

Of the aromatic varieties, Gewürztraminer does not move far from its home in the village of Tramin, where styles range from off-dry to full-on sweet and luscious.

Sylvaner

In the Valle Isarco, Sylvaner has body and richness of aroma which distance it from the more familiar, lighter styles of Alsace.

Grüner Veltliner

Also in the Valle Isarco, Grüner Veltliner has the power and ageing potential of its top Austrian counterparts, and there is also a tiny production of the appetisingly peachy Schiave/ Riesling crossing, Kerner.

Riesling

Val Venosta is the go-to destination for steely, refined Riesling in Alto Adige.

Pinot Noir/ Blauburgunder

Among the international red varieties, there are individual examples of imposing Cabernet and Merlot in the lower valley of the Adige, but it is the far more widely planted Pinot Noir/ Blauburgunder that has made its name in the province for wines with very pure varietal character.

The longest established sites are on the eastern slopes of the valley, which include the renowned vineyards of Mazon.

The local Vernatsch/ Schiava and Lagrein may come second behind Pinot Noir in terms of surface area under vine, but they are two of the great resources of the province and both give their best in specific sites.

Vernatsch/ Schiava

Vernatsch is the grape of the Kaltersee/ Caldaro DOC, where it makes delicious cherry- and violet-scented wines with a delicate almondy finish.

The other classic growing area is above Bolzano at Santa Maddalena. The wines here often have a dollop of Lagrein in the blend, which makes them a little darker and more structured than those of Caldaro; think Moulin-a-Vent, not so much for the aromatic profile but for style and drinkability.

Lagrein

Lagrein, on the other hand, is a much more robust proposition.

Its family tree includes Teroldego and Syrah, and it shows in the inky, glass-staining colour and chunky tannins.

Lagrein needs heat and well-drained soils, and its traditional home is just outside Bolzano, in the garden suburb of Gries.

Reinvention

The Alto Adige has a tradition of cooperative winemaking that goes back to the 19th century. Its 12 top quality, highly efficient cooperatives collect grapes from 4,800 small-scale growers and today account for around 70% of the provincial production.

The remaining 30% is made by long established private houses and in lesser – but increasing – amounts by small independent estates. Membership of the ‘Vignaioli Alto Adige’ association which represents the category has grown to over 100 in recent years.

Winemaking in the Alto Adige has seen perhaps the most radical transformation of any region in Italy. The province today is universally recognised for the white wines which constitute 65% of its production, but historically red wines dominated.

Up until the 1970s, Vernatsch occupied almost 70% of the total surface area and monopolised planting in the villages of the Bassa Atesina.

Vineyards were heavily cropped, much of the wine was sold in bulk, and although the arrival of the DOC in 1975 improved quality, the wines of the time were light and very simple.

Change began in the 1980s, and in the years that followed the Alto Adige basically reinvented itself. The drivers of the revolution were the cooperatives.

Legendary Kellermeisters like Hans Terzer at San Michele, Sebastian Stocker at Terlano, and Willi Sturz at Tramin began to impose quality in the vineyards and craft premium wines in the cellar, the likes of which had never been seen in the province before.

The quality of winemaking across the province today is high, although at times you feel it risks overshadowing the sense of place.

Many of the top selections are concentrated, full-bodied wines with bold fruit and aromas which owe more than a glance towards international styles.

Clarification or complication?

The Alto Adige’s newly revealed UGA (Unità Geografiche Aggiuntive) zoning, which comes into effect with the 2024 vintage, aims to put the focus back on terroir and give some order to the ampelographical wealth and diversity by designating sites for specific grapes varieties.

The Mazon UGA, for example, is reserved for Pinot Noir; Gries-Moritzing for Lagrein; and UGAs at over 900 metres above-sea-level at Appiano and Magrè are created for Muller Thurgau.

In other instances, the system is a victim of the province’s eclectic traditions. There are cases where up to five white, red and aromatic varieties share the same UGA.

It is hard to imagine that grapes with such different characters can express the identity of a terroir.

Time will tell, as the wines come out over the next two years, whether the 86 new UGAs will clarify or further complicate the task of grasping the intricacies of the Alto Adige.

However it unfolds, there will always be much to enjoy in this bountiful province.

Below is a selection of two-dozen of my top wines from the current vintages tasted at the Alto Adige Wine Summit held in Bolzano in September this year.

Pinot Bianco was the star among the white varieties, but Sauvignon is right up there too, and I also loved Sylvaner from the Valle Isarco.

As for the reds, there was Pinot Noir for ageing, Santa Maddalena and Caldaro for drinkability, and if you are looking for something weightier, Lagrein wins the medals as the authentic Alto Adige red wine experience.

Expert-rated Alto Adige: 24 to try

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Southwest of Alba toward Barolo lies Roddi, a tiny village known for The Path of Poetry and Truffle Dog University, where canines train to hunt the local white and black gold.

Barolo, poetry, and truffles share more than proximity – each takes time to compose and even more to comprehend.

Surrounded by vino, verse and funghi, I explored a zone of long-established rules and regency. Maybe the best time to start a Barolo collection was 20 years ago with 19th century red wine blue bloods like Fontanafredda, Marchesi di Barolo and Vietti, but what if you could be an early adopter of the next-wave classics rising next door?

The following aren’t legacy estates with showpiece cantinas – they’re bootstrapped farmers with dirt under their nails and, more importantly, brilliant terroir underfoot. This is Barolo’s real wealth.

These emerging artisans occupy less than 1% of the planted area, but their wines brim with Piedmont’s coveted somewhereness that drives prices and promotes legends.

Roccheviberti

The inevitable latecomer

Claudio Viberti’s father farmed Nebbiolo at the precipice of ‘rocche’, sheer white limestone cliffs between Monforte and Barolo, yet sold the fruit and never bottled under the Viberti name. The family strong-armed a young Claudio into oenology school, but he pursued another path.

In 2002, the land beckoned and the son returned. By then in his early 40s, it took a few years to get his bearings. ‘About five years ago,’ says Claudio, ‘I found my groove and the wines that this land wants to produce. Word-of-mouth is spreading.’

The dramatic sites are precious crus known for perfume, backbone, and ageable elegance – his father’s Rocche di Castiglione grapes were sold to grand houses. In this unique micro-zone, quality is damn near inevitable.

I witnessed a restaurateur from Alba’s exceptional Osteria dei Sognatori load cases and cases into the back of a vintage Fiat. Tourists drink labels, locals drink delights, and even answering to a consorzio with strict parameters, there’s room to take a creative turn.

20,000 bottles; 3.5 hectares; roccheviberti.it

Prandi

The insistent throwback

Family politics and primogeniture conspired to sideline Cristina Marello Prandi. Italian tradition favours firstborn sons – women are the last resort.

Still, Prandi’s hands wouldn’t be pried from where her great-grandfather founded the winery in 1856 on a ridge above the iconic Cannubi hill. In the late-1980s, her uncle transitioned to wine in bulk and thus no Prandi labels emerged as Barolo went global.

Thanks to dogged persistence and dirt-first agronomy, Cristina finally owns part of those vineyards overlooking her home village. ‘Barolo, for me, is my town and then my wine,’ she explains.

When friends and classmates left for adventures abroad, she stayed put. ‘I never tried to escape. My land is my study and my study is my experience.’

Imagine a young Jane Goodall dedicated to grapes instead of chimps. Wunderkind Prandi takes a similarly intuitive, holistic approach – a new expression of old beliefs in soil stewardship and agricultural diversity.

Prandi’s instinct and quiet wildness show in the purity of her wines. ‘We are organic since always. We don’t have a to-do list. There’s no recipe.’

25,000 bottles; 4 hectares; cristinaprandi.com

Cascina Bongiovanni

The committed family

It starts with a balance of labour: Marina Giordano and daughter Sara face the public and deal with trade. The men grow grapes and make wine.

Davide Mozzone might be neurodivergent; his son, Luca, certainly is. Marina sees this as a factor in their success: while others court applause, they pour savant-level focus into their cellar and famed sites of Castiglione Falletto, Serralunga and Monforte.

In generations past, the Bongiovanni family worked for nobiles and sold grapes grown for volume. ‘But when times changed,’ says Mazzone, ‘the only choice became to aim for quality.’ That’s when they shifted to expression, complexity, and ripening seeds.

‘It takes the plants 30 or 40 years to find equilibrium. And you only get 40 or 50 vintages as a winegrower.’ Thirty-three vintages in, Mozzone and his vines reflect a profound harmony, and their portfolio spans Nebbiolo’s full spectrum.

‘We produce something for the table everyday, and for the culture later. Drinkability and ageability – what if you can have both?’ he asks.

Their Barolo is rich reward for those with and without the patience to wait decades.

50,000 bottles; 7 hectares; cascinabongiovanni.it

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Michael Garner, Andrea Briccarello and Jason Millar tasted 75 wines, with 3 Outstanding and 28 Highly recommended

Valpolicella Classico: Panel tasting scores

75 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 3

Highly recommended 28

Recommended 36

Commended 8

Fair 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their current-release Valpolicella Classico red wines, including Rosso and Superiore

Scroll down to see the top-scoring wines from our Valpolicella Classico panel tasting

The effect of altitude

The Valpolicella Classico production area begins some 20km east of lake Garda, where the river Adige bends eastwards above Verona.

The Classico zone centres on three main valleys, running from west to east: Fumane (relatively tight, spicy wines), Marano (more open and vibrantly fruity) and Negrar (fuller-bodied and slightly rounder).

The further from the lake, the incrementally warmer the temperatures become.

The ‘altitude effect’ is omnipresent: in broad brushstrokes this means the higher the vines are grown, the lighter the body and the lower the alcohol, while acidity levels tend to increase.

Widespread appeal

This enjoyable tasting focused on two of the area’s five separate denominations: regular Valpolicella Classico (aka ‘annata’, the standard wine of the vintage) and the more ambitious Classico Superiore, which has higher alcohol levels and is aged for longer before release (minimum 12 months in all).

On the whole, the Classico Superiore wines fared better. Andrea Briccarello preferred the ‘much deeper and intense wines’, though Jason Millar favoured the more youthful style for ‘an irresistible springiness better enjoyed early than aged away’.

Something I noted myself was a clear difference between Classico’s youthful vigour and cherry-infused primary fruit sensations and the restrained, elegant and nuanced – even ethereal – characters of more ageworthy Classico Superiore.

Both styles nonetheless retain the freshness and balance that are the hallmarks of fine Veronese reds, and thereby offer ‘plenty of choices to the consumer’, according to Briccarello.

It’s interesting to note that most of the top-scoring wines were made solely from freshly picked grapes, rather than with a proportion of semi-dried (appassimento) fruit.

The latter is permitted by the DOC regulations but, in my view, it blurs the lines between Valpolicella and the appassimento-based wines of Valpolicella: Ripasso, Amarone and Recioto.

All three judges found the overall standard across these wines to be consistently good, with Millar maintaining that ‘Classico is one of Italy’s great affordable reds’.

What to eat with Valpolicella Classico, by Fiona Beckett

Valpolicella might not reach the heights of other Italian reds on its own merits, but as an accompaniment to food, it’s a charming and delicious companion.

It, of course, goes with antipasti and many pasta dishes – the surprise being how well it pairs with spaghetti al limone.

It’s also – and this isn’t to denigrate it – a great wine to drink with pizza and is particularly delicious with calves’ liver, including the classic fegato alla veneziana.

Taking it out of Italy, it’s one of those versatile reds that helps you out when everyone is ordering something different, as it also works with fish – even sushi for the lighter styles – and with a range of different vegetable dishes, including tricky-to-match grilled artichokes.

Given its cherry flavours, it’s a natural with duck, too. Try it with smoked duck – or smoked chicken come to that – or with soft cheeses, especially mozzarella and burrata.

Finally, and keep this in mind for Christmas, Valpolicella would be the perfect wine to crack open with a Boxing Day spread or a turkey sandwich!

See all notes and scores from the Valpolicella Classico panel tasting

The judges

Michael Garner is co-owner of Italian specialist Tria Wines and the DWWA Regional Chair for Northern Italy. He is author of Amarone and the Fine Wines of Verona (£35 Académie du Vin Library, 2017)

Andrea Briccarello is senior business development manager at Jascots Wine Merchants. Formerly head sommelier and wine buyer at Galvin restaurant group, and a brand manager for Bisol Prosecco, he is a DWWA judge for Northern Italy, Veneto and Piedmont

Jason Millar is a freelance wine writer, consultant, judge and communicator, with a focus on South Africa and Italy. He has a background in buying, importing and sales, and in 2016 was the top WSET Diploma graduate worldwide

Valpolicella Classico panel tasting results:

Wines were tasted blind

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With the release of the 2023 vintage, Gaja’s ‘Gaia & Rey’ Chardonnay turns 40 – a symbolic milestone for a pioneering wine. It was the first white produced by the renowned Barbaresco winery, the first Chardonnay to be born in the Langhe, and the first Italian white wine to undergo malolactic fermentation and ageing in barrique.

The wine’s label combines the name of owner Angelo Gaja’s grandmother, Clotilde Rey, and that of his firstborn, Gaia, born in 1979 (the very year the Chardonnay vineyard was planted in Treiso), representing the company’s roots and its future.

On its release, it seemed outright futuristic.

Find out more about the evolution of Gaja’s Gaia & Rey Chardonnay

In the Langhe at that time, farmers couldn’t even pronounce the word Chardonnay, while Piedmont was just beginning to make its name thanks to Barbaresco and, above all, Barolo.

In Italy, white wines were considered simple products for immediate consumption and by the end of the spring they would all be sold out.

‛But I believed that the Langhe region offered the right characteristics to produce a complex, long-lived white,’ recalls Angelo Gaja. ‛What inspired me was my meeting with Robert Mondavi, who wanted to make great white wines in Napa Valley, emulating Burgundy. I liked his open-mindedness and resourcefulness.’

Gaia & Rey was released quietly as a table wine, but it quickly built a loyal following, especially abroad, surprisingly complementing the sumptuous Gaja reds. Today, it is included in the Langhe DOC. Given its success, other producers in the Langhe began to consider following in its footsteps.

How it started

According to a report by the Nomisma research institute on Italian consumer perception, Piedmont is the leading Italian region for the production of quality red wines, the fourth for sparkling wines, but only sixth for still white wines.

Asti DOCG is by far the highest production Piedmontese wine (90 million bottles per year of sparkling wine and Moscato d’Asti), and numerous other districts are driven by white wines, such as Gavi, Roero Arneis, Erbaluce di Caluso, and Derthona Timorasso.

This perception is largely influenced by the success of Barolo and Barbaresco, but it could change. ‛We believe the future of wine lies at higher altitudes, and we see it as whiter,’ Gaia Gaja beams.

She’s referring to her family’s latest business project: the acquisition of 30 hectares of land in the municipality of Trezzo Tinella, mostly planted with Chardonnay and Sauvignon – grape varieties with which Gaja boasts solid experience (in addition to Gaia & Rey, the winery produces Sauvignon Alteni di Brassica and the Chardonnay-Sauvignon blend, Rossj-Bass).

Trezzo Tinella is located a few bends above Barbaresco, just enough to rise from 300 to 600 metres above sea level and benefit from a decidedly cooler microclimate. The soils alternate between sand and stone.

‘It’s a virgin place for viticulture, which is why we’re extending the experimental phase.’ For his part Angelo Gaja knows well that a terroir isn’t created overnight and confirms that he’s in no rush.

In the meantime, the Gaja family’s investment could inspire others to follow in their footsteps and help improve Piedmont’s reputation as a white wine region.

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Broadening horizons

‛It was the late 1980s, I had recently graduated from the Alba School of Oenology, and a friend and I pooled our funds to buy a bottle of Gaia & Rey. It was a revelation! Shortly afterward, I decided to plant a few rows of Chardonnay in my vineyard,’ says Sergio Germano, who owns a winery in Serralunga d’Alba and is currently president of the local producers’ consortium.

‛The Langhe wine scene is dominated by the native Nebbiolo, but white wines can carve out a space as a complement to the company’s range, or as a basis for comparison with foreign wines,’ he continues.

‘The desire for innovation is a good sign; it shows that the region is dynamic, although I don’t think the great Piedmontese reds are ready to give up their crown,’ reflects Chiara Boschis, a Barolo producer.

Germano agrees but acknowledges that ‘in the face of climate change, we need to be ready to rethink paradigms.’ After all, he already produces a high-altitude Riesling in Cigliè, outside the Barolo area.

A true alternative?

So, could the white wine, considered merely ‘a complement to the range or a challenge to foreign markets,’ become an alternative to traditional red wines? ‘Sometimes Gaia & Rey succeeds where our reds cannot.

‘In the 1984, 1994 and 2002 vintages we gave up producing the Barbaresco crus because the Nebbiolo hadn’t ripened to perfection, but Gaia & Rey was exceptional, a true alter ego of our reds,’ Gaia reasons.

‘Chardonnay adapts better to extreme climates; it doesn’t suffer from the swings between very cold and very hot vintages, and the phenolic ripeness of its skin is less decisive than in red grapes,’ she continues.

With its rich array of white grape varieties and a fortunate morphology (Piedmont literally means ‘at the foot of the mountains’), the region seems poised to broaden its horizons.

Chiara Boschis, too, has ventured into producing a few bottles of white wine for the first time from Nascetta grapes, an ancient Langhe variety now favoured by local winemakers.

Maybe Angelo Gaja’s belief is spreading: ‘We must learn to look at the present not with the eyes of yesterday, but with those of tomorrow, to have an open mind toward the future.’

At the same time, however, he preaches calm and composure, as his rural culture taught him: ‘Senza fretta,’ – no rush…

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Lake Garda, Italy’s largest lake at 52km from top to bottom, is shared between three different regions: Veneto on the eastern shore, Lombardy to the west and Trentino at the northern tip.

Each area has its own rich history, typical cuisines – including the freshwater fish increasingly present on menus – and winemaking traditions. The lake’s many and varied wines are found everywhere.

Garda has none of the soporific atmosphere of some lakes; instead there’s an energetic vibe in the numerous historic waterside towns and villages, many of which are linked by lakeside foot and cycle paths.

See below for our expert’s insider guide on where to eat and drink around Lake Garda

The clear waters invite refreshing swims and are popular for windsurfing, kitesurfing and other watersports, especially towards the north, thanks to regular winds: the Péler, which blows from the northern mountains during the morning, and the afternoon Ora from the south.

The winds also help keep vineyards in the nearby regions healthy, while the mild climate is fundamental for Lake Garda’s excellent olive oil and exotic vegetation.

Lakeside attractions

The lake’s efficient ferry service makes it easy to explore from the water, calling at many points around the shores.

Sit back and watch the scenery change, from the wide open landscapes of the south, passing places like Sirmione, with its ancient Roman villa ruins at the end of a narrow peninsula, to Bardolino on the eastern side, where the annual wine festival celebrated its 94th edition this October (2-6), and the Punta San Vigilio headland.

Cross west to the secluded Salò inlet then northwards where the lake narrows and the scenery rises in a surging crescendo to mountain backdrops. Monte Baldo (2,218m) on the northeastern shore is linked by cable car down to Malcesine, which features one of the lake’s striking waterside castles.

On the opposite side of the water is pretty Limone, where there are historic lemon houses (the town has been known for its lemon cultivation since the early 18th century) and sheer rocky cliffs skirted by a spectacular cycle path over the water’s edge.

To the north, Riva del Garda and Torbole are home to numerous watersports centres and to traditional Trentino cuisine that is celebrated with a month-long autumn festival of food-themed events. This year’s ‘Mese del Gusto’ festival runs from late September through to the first week of November.

For more information on things to do and places to be around Lake Garda, visitgarda.com is the region’s official tourism website

Where to eat and drink around Lake Garda

While everything tastes good with a lake view, sometimes the most authentic flavours are found away from the waterside. Lake Garda has a thriving restaurant scene, from fine-dining spots to simple wine bars and trattorias.

OsteRiva, Riva del Garda

From the message on the window alerting potential diners to the fact that no pizza, lasagne or mussels are served, it’s clear that the Torboli family, who run this appealing place in central Riva, are committed to authenticity.

The menu includes Trentino regional specialities such as canederli dumplings with crunchy speck, as well as venison and freshwater fish. Try the homemade whitefish ravioli with smoked tench, fried lake sardines with polenta, or grilled rainbow trout.

The wine list is impressive here, too, focusing on the region and the Lake Garda area, with a selection of old vintages and wines made from rare, ancient varieties from pre-phylloxera vines.

Madonna delle Vittorie, Arco

An award-winning wine and olive oil estate with a farmhouse restaurant that’s easy to reach on foot or bicycle from Torbole and Riva del Garda along the Sarca river path.

Signs lead to the winery, olive mill and restaurant, where dishes include lake fish, carne salada and homemade tagliatelle with ragout. The meat dishes are made with the estate’s own beef.

This is in the Trentino region, so the wines, which are an ingredient in some dishes, include Teroldego (red), Nosiola (white) and Trentodoc spumante (try the driest dosaggio zero version). Finish with a lemon and olive oil gelato or grappa sorbet.

Vineria Rèfol, Torbole

A friendly wine bar on a pretty piazzetta opposite the water, just a short stroll from the ferry stop at Torbole on Garda’s northern shore.

There’s a laid-back vibe and cool soundtrack, with a small interior and outside tables backed by lush wisteria, with bougainvillea next door.

The selection of wines is perpetually evolving and although the majority are from the lake or the wider Trentino-Alto Adige region, there are bottles from Sardinia and elsewhere, too, which are sure to satisfy the curiosity of the locals who like to drop in for a glass on the way home from work. See the Vineria Rèfol Facebook page.

Vecchia Malcesine, Malcesine

Chef Leandro Luppi inaugurated his one-star Michelin restaurant in this panoramic spot in 1998 and has never lost his love for colour and spontaneity – characteristics that shine through in his creations.

The menus change regularly, but classics include lake fish carbonara, and trout with white chocolate and horseradish. Wine pairings are sometimes bold and never banal (the marinated cucumber with sake is memorable), and from the wild herb bouquet starter to the beetroot gelato with liquorice and lemon for dessert, every meal is full of surprises.

The atmosphere is welcoming and Luppi, whose cat strolls freely, lives upstairs. The playlist of laid-back ’70s to ’90s classics is the chef’s own. 

Il Cicheto, Garda

Join the locals at the Coltro family’s small and simple wine bar just beyond the souvenir shops in central Garda. Order a glass of Garganega or Custoza, Trentodoc or Bardolino Chiaretto, and pair it with your pick of the day’s freshly prepared cicchetti snacks.

Self-defined as an ittiturismo (a fish-themed version of an agriturismo), this is a place where you can enjoy fish both sea- and lake-sourced, with tempting bites such as fried perch fillets, mussels, whitefish, tuna balls, sardines and smelt, although mini-panini with cold cuts are available, too.

The atmosphere is pure Veneto, so take a stool inside or out and relax as the regulars banter. See the Il Cicheto Facebook page.

Munus, Bardolino

The location is the charming Borgo Bardolino, a walled public-access park converted by the Guerrieri-Rizzardi wine-producing family, on the site of their former winery, as a precinct for shops and restaurants.

Opt for dinner at Munus restaurant for an attractive farmhouse setting with dishes such as burrata-filled ravioli with Valpolicella Ripasso reduction and speck, or a lake fish version of Parmigiana with char in addition to the usual aubergine and cheese.

The good range of vegetarian dishes includes fresh pasta with spinach and local truffle. While the Guerrieri-Rizzardi family doesn’t run the restaurant, its labels do feature on the wine list. 

Tenuta Canova, Lazise

With its ‘wine first’ philosophy, this informal estate eatery 4km from charming Lazise features a menu that includes suggested pairings.

Some recipes incorporate the wines, too, such as the delicious risotto made with Amarone and Monte Veronese cheese. Starters include Venetian-style cicchetti bites, while grape-must gelato is among the desserts. It’s a peaceful spot, with a contemporary interior and outside tables surrounded by greenery.

Don’t miss the multimedia wine museum also here. This is part of the Masi group run by the Boscaini family, famous for Amarone; its Valpolicella winery is a 20-minute drive away.

Osteria Rivelin, Peschiera del Garda

A wine list that focuses on labels from the Lake Garda area and a menu incorporating ingredients protected through Slow Food’s Presidia preservation scheme, such as Monte Veronese cheese, make this welcoming little restaurant within the historic town walls of Peschiera a must.

Run by Andrea Girlanda, it makes gnocchi fresh daily (try them with lake fish ragout) while other typical dishes include baked tench al saor (think escabeche).

Before dinner, check out the Girlanda family’s La Vecia Bottega deli/wine bar a five-minute stroll away – run by Girlanda’s sommelier sister Michela – for an aperitivo with a taste of local cheese or charcuterie. 

Trattoria La Fiasca, Sirmione

Stunning Sirmione is a narrow peninsula at the heart of Lake Garda’s southern shore. It can get busy, but a peaceful mealtime is guaranteed at this traditional trattoria in the centre.

Two simple dining rooms on opposite sides of the lane leading to the Santa Maria Maggiore church are a haven for enjoying lake fish dishes such as spaghetti with smoked pike or red tagliolini pasta with perch.

The wine list is excellent, with lots of local labels including a hard-to-find white, San Martino della Battaglia DOC, made with the Friulano grape known locally as Tuchì. 

Banco Salumi, Salò

At Salò, which sits around a secluded bay on the lake’s western shore, this modest looking deli run by Rocco Arici and wife Monica is the locals’ choice for a tasty lunch.

Alongside daily specials such as meatloaf or frittata, platters and panini are available all day. Specialities include truffle-infused Formagella from Tremosine sul Garda, mature goat’s cheeses and Bagòss, a strong-flavoured Slow Food Presidium cow’s milk cheese made with saffron.

The selection of wines includes a refreshing own-label Turbiana white and there’s a range of drinks from Tassoni, the historic Salò-based producer of the citron drink cedrata; try it as a spritz. See the Banco Salumi Facebook page.

Mapping the wines of Lake Garda

The huge variety of wines made around Lake Garda creates a mosaic of styles and colours, from any-time sparklers through to youthful and ageworthy whites, rosés and reds, to luscious passitos.

Beginning at the lake’s northernmost point and working around roughly clockwise…

Trento DOC

From the Trentino region, lying to the north and northwest of the top end of the lake, Chardonnay, Pinot Bianco, Pinot Grigio and Meunier are the grapes grown for Trentodoc, a traditional-method spumante that spends a minimum of 15 months on the lees (or 36 months for Riserva).

Vino Santo del Trentino DOC

Sweet wines produced in the region from the top of Lake Garda northwest into Trentino towards Vezzano, near Trento. After several months of appassimento (drying) on racks, Nosiola grapes produce wine that ferments in oak, often ageing for 10 years. The style features among the Slow Food Foundation’s protected Presidia categories.

Bardolino DOC

These light, fruit-forward red and chiaretto rosé wines from Lake Garda’s southeast are made with a Corvina-Rondinella-based blend.

Valpolicella DOC & Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG

Corvina, Corvinone and Rondinella vines, largely pergola-trained, grow just east of Lake Garda for Valpolicella’s celebrated reds, including rich ripasso and intense Amarone.

Custoza DOC

Situated just to the south of Lake Garda and west of the city of Verona, Custoza DOC produces delicate white blends with a savoury character made with Garganega, Trebbianello, Trebbiano and Bianca Fernanda (a local Cortese clone) in still, spumante and sweet passito versions.

Lugana DOC

The Turbiana grape is the protagonist of this historic wine area, which cradles the lake’s south-southwestern shores, for some of Italy’s favourite cellarable whites. The bulk of the DOC is in Lombardy, but its top northeastern corner lies over the border in the Veneto region. Also try the sparkling and late-harvest versions.

Garda DOC

Covering a vast territory stretching across 10 denomination areas, Garda DOC encompasses various styles but the focus is on spumante, especially made with white Garganega, plus Corvina for rosé bubbles.

Riviera del Garda Classico DOC Valtènesi Chiaretto

While various wine styles are made in this area west of the lake in Lombardy, it’s the fresh chiaretto rosés, predominantly made with Groppello grapes, that take centre stage.

San Martino della Battaglia DOC

A lesser-known denomination on the southern side of Lake Garda, producing rounded whites made with the Tuchì grape, known elsewhere as Friulano. The San Martino della Battaglia tower merits a visit.

Sarah Lane is an AIES certified sommelier who specialises in wine and food travel. She lives near Bologna and leads private tours around Emilia Romagna, as well as writing on the subject for various guides and publications.

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You love wine. You love music. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the perfect playlist for what’s in your glass?

You might ask, how could any musical recommendation be anything other than personal and subjective?

Stay with me: There is research. Even this sceptical writer with a high-tech background focused on data-driven results has been surprised by what the research data show.

Read Susan R Lin MW’s research on music and wine

Why music and wine? There is nothing like the transporting magical experience of listening to music that resonates deeply.

Wait, there is! You know when it happens: You taste a wine and something happens within you. A strong feeling, a long ago memory, something you can’t quite name surfaces. Suddenly you are on a journey to the past. It is visceral and emotional.

Music is my constant. Since my childhood I listened, I trained, I performed. I still do. Wine fulfils a similar passion, academically and spiritually. Their synergies and wonderful sensorial differences led me to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in piano and musicology, as well as the Master of Wine.

Naturally I had to explore any effects of music on the sensory experience of wine tasting for my Master of Wine Research Paper. What I share with you here is based on my own research, combined with the body of research from other academics.

A quick primer: Music comprises elements, and these were found to have a statistically significant effect on taste perception: pitch (high-low), tempo (fast-slow), timbre (sharp-round) and articulation (dynamic-smooth).

Similarly, wine has sensory characteristics: acidity or freshness, fruitiness, richness, complexity, and for sparkling wines, effervescence.

Despite music and wine being disparate sensory realms, their effects can be strikingly similar.

We often characterise both music and wine with such words as delicate, powerful, vibrant and so on. The combination of these components lend music and wine their overall feel and emotional potential.

The wine playlists: six to try

Research shows that we make intuitive associations between musical elements and taste sense – for instance, high pitch associates with acidity; low pitch can evoke bitterness. This is an oversimplification, of course, and the myriad combinations of elements make for fascinating research.

Based on the research – and a convivial wink from yours truly – here are six playlists to jumpstart your own wine and music journey, each tailored to complement a different style of wine.

Music for light whites

Key features: Freshness, fruitiness, zestiness, delicacy

Musical elements to enhance the tasting experience: High pitch, mid-fast tempo, bright timbre, dynamic articulation; gentle, exciting character.

Click to listen – my starter playlist on YouTube:

• Celtic and/or Chinese harp and flute music
• Pharrell Williams: Happy
• Taylor Swift: Shake It Off
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No 23, I Allegro

Music for rich whites

Key features: Oak/baking spices, broad/lush, creamy/textural

Musical elements: Lower pitch, slower tempo, rounder timbre, smoother articulation; layered textures, more powerful yet calm character.

Click to listen – my starter playlist:

• Carlos Santana: Samba Pa Ti
• Orville Peck: Daytona Sand
• Fujii Kaze: Garden
• Claude Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

Music for light reds

Key features: Fresh, fruity, bright, delicate floral, subtle earth notes

Musical elements: Mid-high pitch, mid-fast tempo, bright timbre, dynamic articulation; gentle, exciting character

Click to listen – my starter playlist:

• Toshiki Kadomatsu: If You (Wanna Dance Tonight)
• Ed Sheeran: Shape of You
• The Weeknd: Out of Time
• Johann Sebastian Bach: Keyboard Concerto No 4, 1st Movement

Music for rich reds

Key features: Texture (tannin shape), oak, intensity of fruit/earth notes, richness, complexity, density

Musical elements: Lower pitch, slower, stately tempo, rich timbre, smoother articulation, layered textures, powerful + calm or powerful + exciting

Click to listen – my starter playlist:

• The Doors: Riders on the Storm
• The Beatles: I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
• Astor Piazzolla: Libertango
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No 7, 2nd Movement

Music for sparkling wines

Key features: Effervescence, and depending on style (e.g. Prosecco versus a youthful Brut non-vintage Franciacorta versus a vintage Champagne) we use musical elements as levers to highlight the appropriate sensory characteristics in the wine.

Click to listen – my starter playlist for lighter sparkling wines:

• Any well-produced Eurodance or up-tempo 90s/00s pop!
• Earth, Wind, & Fire: September
• Dave Brubeck: Someday My Prince Will Come
• Camille Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals, Finale

Click to listen – my starter playlist for richer, vintage-style sparkling wines:

• Bruno Mars: That’s What I Like
• David Guetta & Sia: Beautiful People
• Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No1, 3rd Movement
• Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto, 3rd Movement

Given the incredible wealth of music available, it was challenging to pare the lists down to a few selections – nonetheless, these lists demonstrate the power of different combinations of elements and character to bring a similar effect across varied musical genres.

Hopefully this has your creative juices flowing and you’ll be inspired to explore further!

Let your senses and emotions guide you. Allow yourself to sink into the feelings you experience. Be transported to someplace familiar – and perhaps to someplace new. Go forth and create your own music and wine adventure.

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Pietro Ratti walks among the rows of his newest vineyard, located in the highest part of La Morra, one of the 11 communes that make up the Barolo DOCG area.

It’s a scorching summer day but here at Serradenari, situated almost 500m above sea level, the woods surrounding the vineyard allow for a light breeze to blow.

The view is magnificent: the hill faces southwest and in the background the Alps are clearly visible.

‘My father did not consider Serradenari a cru,’ Ratti (pictured, below) says. ‘He thought that this hill was too high, too cold for Nebbiolo grapes. Now we enjoy with satisfaction our new Barolo, produced from grapes grown here.’ (The 2019 was the first vintage, released in 2023.)

Global wine geography is changing, and Ratti’s ‘Barolo of the peaks’ is a clear example of this.

Redrawing the map

Areas that were once considered unsuitable for viticulture – and even more unsuitable for producing great wines – are now on the rise due to climate change.

Pietro’s father, the late Renato Ratti (born 1934), published the Carta del Barolo map in 1970, on which the historic sub-zones of Barolo wine were indicated for the first time, including those most suited for producing high-quality bottles.

For geological and environmental reasons, the Serradenari zone doesn’t appear on that map.

‘Until 30 years ago, the cultivation of Nebbiolo vines, intended for Barolo, stopped below around 400m of elevation,’ explains Ratti, indicating the main road below leading north to La Morra that, in the past, constituted a sort of commonly accepted boundary.

Even today, most of the vineyards of the denomination are located below the road that cuts across the hill.

In 2004, however, the legendary producer Bruno Giacosa from Neive vinified the grapes grown above that road in his Barolo Croera ($179.99 K&LWines), a one-year experiment.

Mapping like mad

Langhe winemakers like mapping.

Long before Renato Ratti, two local scholars, the surveyor Lorenzo Fantini and botanist Ferdinando Vignolo Lutati, had already attempted to highlight the areas suitable for Barolo in their texts, titled respectively Monografia sulla Viticoltura ed Enologia nella Provincia di Cuneo (1879) and Sulla delimitazione delle zone a vini tipici (1929).

Following on from Ratti’s Carta del Barolo, the Atlante delle vigne di Langa was drawn up in 2000 by the experts of the Slow Food movement (headquartered in Bra, just northwest of the Barolo region).

Then, in 2010, came the official map of the 170 Menzioni Geografiche Aggiuntive (MGA) delimited production areas, pushed through by the local winemakers’ consorzio and now an integral part of the regulations of Barolo DOCG.

Except for Ratti’s map, the works cited don’t introduce a hierarchy between the vineyards (the MGAs don’t classify the sub-zones).

To identify the best locations, researchers asked locals, indicating the sub-zones considered most sought-after, whose grapes were promised to brokers year after year, or those for which the demand from bottling companies exceeded the supply of landowners.

They were the slopes exposed to the sun, the so-called sorì, in Piemontese dialect. This gave rise to the myth of the great crus of the Langhe.

In practice, these were the vineyards on hills at 300m-350m facing south and southwest. The feeling today is that something is changing because of climate imbalances, so other sub-zones, once undervalued, are unexpectedly getting their time in the sun.

When did the Langhe start to heat up?

Opinions among Barolo producers differ. Elio Altare said in an interview that 1997 was a turning point, while Angelo Gaja calls 2008 a ‘year of no return’. And many of us remember the torrid summer of 2003, a bit of a halfway point between those two.

In fact, when Barolo’s 2003 vintage hit the market four years later, the wines were loaded with alcohol and jammy fruit.

Winemakers realised that it was time to take some countermeasures and so, since then, summer thinning of the vines has been reduced, thick foliage is encouraged and anti-sun (and anti-hail) nets have appeared in the Barolo crus.

The ‘2003 climate’ has become the norm, but Barolo producers have equipped themselves.

Pietro Ratti claims that Nebbiolo is ‘a vine more influenced by the microclimate than by the soil’, a variety that, in order to adapt to the recent climatic context, is rather willing to grow in the ‘blank’ areas of the known maps.

Castelletto

The most striking case is Castelletto – a sub-zone of Monforte d’Alba commune in the southern sector of the Barolo DOCG zone – which occupies a rather steep hillside exposed to the morning sun. Opposite, on the other side of the valley, stands the legendary sorì of Serralunga d’Alba commune, with Vignarionda MGA in the foreground.

Castelletto was recognised as an MGA in 2010, but on Ratti’s map, the area had been left blank (whereas Vignarionda was included), just like in the geographical maps of antiquity: ‘Here be dragons’.

In the past, only the central part of the ridge, Pressenda, was recognised as a quality vineyard; other grapes from Castelletto were delivered to the historic Fontanafredda winery, which mixed them with those from other vineyards.

About 10 years ago, two new wineries, Fortemasso and Castello di Perno, decided to focus on this MGA, and the destiny of Castelletto changed.

Despite having different styles, the Barolos of Castelletto are fine, elegant, mineral and deliciously fresh.

Fortemasso’s entire production of Barolo comes only from vineyards in the Castelletto area, using the highest part of the hill for its Barolo Castelletto Riserva, which seems to give its best in years of high temperatures.

It’s too early to say what the actual ‘role’ of climate change is; what is certain is that now, the Castelletto zone consistently gives surprisingly pleasant wines without abdicating Barolo’s structure and tannic nature.

Curiously, the owners of both wineries aren’t originally from the Langhe. ‘I respect the local tradition, but coming from outside, I am not conditioned by it. Perhaps at the start I was considered a bit naive,’ admits Gregorio Gitti (pictured, below), university professor, lawyer and owner of Castello di Perno.

That may be so, but in the meantime Barolo’s great names have landed in Castelletto, one above all: Comm. GB Burlotto (2020, £307 Vinum/$249.95 Somms Cellars).

Ravera

Another MGA on the rise is Ravera, in the municipality of Novello, also in Barolo DOCG’s southern sector.

This is a large and varied sub-zone in terms of elevation and exposures, but at its heart is a wonderful amphitheatre of vineyards dominated by Cascina Nuova, Elvio Cogno’s winery.

Elvio’s daughter Nadia and her husband Valter Fissore believed in the potential of Ravera, whose grapes used to end up blended with those from other areas.

Fissore recalls: ‘In 1991, we were the first to come out with a Barolo Ravera, and for many years we were the only ones. The best area is the one facing southeast, open to the valley, ventilated and blessed by the temperature range.’

Today, they produce three Barolo Ravera from vineyards in the sub-zone: Ravera, Vigna Elena (both grown at 380m; Ravera 2020, £80.45 Shelved Wine/$125 Morrell Wine, Vigna Elena 2019, £129.72 Goedhuis Waddesdon/$249.79, Craft Wine) and Bricco Pernice (at 320m; 2019, £105 Vinvm/ $129.94 JJ Buckley).

According to Fissore, ‘Ravera teaches that freshness does not come at the expense of structure and longevity’.

If, at the start, Barolo from Ravera amazed for its chromatic transparency, salinity and finesse, over time these same characteristics have become rewarding: the sub-zone has been the great discovery of the 2000s, as demonstrated by some of the best wineries of the Langhe, such as Vietti, Vajra, Réva and ArnaldoRivera.

Blending benefit

In the Langhe region there are also those who prefer to keep alive the tradition of blending grapes from multiple vineyards to obtain ‘classic’ Barolos.

This offers the advantage of balancing the contribution of grapes from warmer and cooler plots, depending on the vintage conditions.

Pietro Ratti takes advantage of this for his Barolo Marcenasco (2020, £47.99 Cockburns of Leith/$65 Empire Wine), obtained from several estate-owned vineyards in La Morra, spread across different elevations.

But there are wineries that have always produced only classic Barolo: Bartolo Mascarello (see recommendations, below) has always blended the grapes from its five vineyards, some of which are in the famous Cannubi sub-zone, while others are in the east-facing Ruè MGA (both in the Barolo commune).

‘No one denies that the climate has changed, but chasing the highest or least sunny crus makes no sense,’ states owner Maria Teresa Mascarello (pictured, above).

‘The great sorì have not gone out of fashion, because the vineyards have the ability to self-regulate: in hot and dry years they produce fewer bunches to safeguard the integrity of their fruit,’ she continues.

In Maria Teresa’s opinion, it isn’t even necessary to apportion the grapes according to whether they come from more or less warm vineyard parcels, because ‘through the blend, each sub-zone makes a different contribution, so it’s easy to find the optimal balance in the final product’.

With wine region zoning in vogue, claiming that the most balanced Barolo is one that results from a blend may sound provocative.

But thanks to new vineyard locations and new agronomic measures, Barolo is one of the few Italian red wines whose alcohol content hasn’t skyrocketed, staying stable at around 14%. In this way, in the Langhe of 2025 and beyond, there are hopes of overcoming the challenge of global warming.

Barolo’s fresher face: Gaia’s pick of eight to try

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As wine lovers increasingly seek freshness, finesse and authenticity, northern Italy is stepping into the spotlight.

From the alpine extremes of Valle d’Aosta in the far northwest to the terraced slopes of Valtellina, and around to the northeast for the German-speaking vineyards of Alto Adige and the Slavic-leaning cellars of Collio, these frontier regions expand the idea of what ‘Italian wine’ can be.

Notes and scores for eight singular wines from Italy’s northern edges below

The rugged collar of Italy’s boot, spanning some 1,800km, is shaped by rivers, forests and above all the Alps.

Some of these zones are autonomous Italian regions with distinct cultural heritages. Some have vineyards so steep that they require heroic viticulture.

What do these culturally distinct regions have in common?

Cross-cultural fluency

They have well-draining mineral soils and great southern exposure. They have cooling winds and large day and night temperature shifts. They have resilient grape varieties that express the best version of themselves in the local conditions.

And innovative winemakers who defy political lines.

Wines that emerge in these frontiers embody both tradition and transformation. They speak fluently across cultures.

French & Swiss borders

Valle d’Aosta

Tucked high in the Alps where Italy meets France and Switzerland, Valle d’Aosta is Italy’s smallest and most alpine wine region.

Though part of Italy since the country’s unification in 1861, Valle d’Aosta’s true borders have always been defined by mountains.

Italian and French are both official languages, while the local Franco-Provençal dialect, Valdôtain, is another way this valley has held onto its roots.

The region’s heart is a glacial valley running west to east, from Morgex to Donnas, north of Turin on the Piedmont border.

Not far from Morgex, Mont Blanc marks the French frontier, while the Swiss border to the valley’s north runs through Matterhorn and Monte Rosa peaks. Viticulture here is highly fragmented, spread across steep, terraced plots.

Following World War II, Swiss-born priest Joseph Vaudan, who was involved in the founding of the region’s Institut Agricole Régional in the early 1950s, encouraged the planting of varieties such as Petit Rouge and Petite Arvine.

These were well adapted to the alpine conditions in Valle d’Aosta, as well as the Valais region just across the border, and Petite Arvine found a home here as a signature high-elevation variety, producing wines with vibrant acidity. It thrived on sunny, south-facing terraces that had originally been planted with Nebbiolo.

High profile

One estate that helped raise Petite Arvine’s profile is Les Crêtes, run by the Charrère family, originally from the Savoie area of France.

Based in Aymavilles, in central Valle d’Aosta, since the 1750s, their vineyards stretch along the left bank of the Dora Baltea river at 600m-1,000m.

This elevation lends freshness and finesse to their Petite Arvine, Chardonnay and Fumin wines. Valle d’Aosta DOC’s appellation rules are being revised to permit vineyards at higher elevations, to help combat the effects of climate change.

Les Crêtes general manager Giulio Corti says: ‘We are defined by peaks above 4,000m to the north and the south. Strong dry winds that descend from the Alps bring drought and large diurnal shifts. Harvest has become more complex now.’

In the upper valley, close to the French border, Cave Mont Blanc stands out. Founded in 1983, this cooperative unites small growers to preserve viticulture at 900m-1,200m on glacial soils untouched by phylloxera.

Its star grape is Prié Blanc, used in the Valle d’Aosta DOC white still and sparkling versions from the Morgex et La Salle sub-zone.

Company president Nicolas Bovard explains: ‘Our members farm parcels as small as 8m². Thanks to regional autonomy, we were able to invest in viticulture. We’re now experimenting with sparkling wine production at 2,173m, at [cable car hub] Skyway Monte Bianco’s Pavillon du Mont Fréty.’

Underscoring the pioneering spirit of these mountain frontiers, some wines in magnum are being aged even higher, in ice caves at 3,462m

Swiss border

Valtellina, Lombardy

After three centuries of Swiss rule, Valtellina passed to Austrian control in 1815, and then to France, before becoming part of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1859 and subsequently part of Italy upon unification two years later.

Valtellina continued supplying a large part of its wines to Switzerland, over the border just to the north, until a tax treaty ended around 50 years ago.

Its signature grape Nebbiolo – known locally as Chiavennasca – gives lighter and more mineral wines in these low-pH granite soils compared to Piedmont’s Barolo or Barbaresco.

Terraced vineyards are planted along the south-facing Rhaetian Alp slopes above the Adda river at up to 800m, entirely hand-tended.

These 2,500km of dry-stone terraces are a marvel of human ingenuity, and the art of creating them was recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2018.

Valtellina gained international attention with its Sforzato di Valtellina, made from partially dried Nebbiolo grapes (Amarone-style, let’s say), after it became a separate DOCG in 2003 – but lately, the lighter and fresher Valtellina Superiore DOCG is gaining popularity over Sforzato.

Once mighty

In Roman times, Pliny the Elder wrote about a much larger Valtellina that extended from Como to Bormio. Today, however, the area is more compact, running roughly from Ardenno to Tirano.

At producer Ar Pe Pe, fifth-generation Isabella Pelizzatti Perego explains: ‘Our territory has always been an important vineyard area, but due to wars and immigration it shrunk to a fraction of its size.

‘No longer having direct access to the Swiss market has created an opportunity to look abroad. The terrain is so diverse and fragmented that we could make a different wine from each terrace.’

A handful of wineries, such as Marcel Zanolari’s near Tirano, operate across the Italy-Switzerland border between Val Poschiavo and Valtellina.

Thanks to a trade provision from the 1990s, producers with vineyards near the border can export up to a certain quota into Switzerland duty-free, benefiting those estates which primarily market to Swiss consumers.

Zanolari was named ‘Winemaker without Borders’ by the Idée-Suisse institution in 2020 for his pioneering alpine viticulture. With his father Giuliano, he introduced organic and biodynamic practices to Valtellina in the 1980s.

Today, he is studying disease resistance at higher elevations, with about 20 grape varieties planted at 1,170m in Poschiavo.

His answer to climate change? Not moving uphill, but using old, ungrafted vines.

Austrian border

Alto Adige/Südtirol

Italy’s jagged northeastern edge, defined by the Dolomites range, marks the border with Austria.

This is Alto Adige/Südtirol, where Germanic, Italian and Ladin cultures converge, and mountainous terroir shapes some of Italy’s most refined wines.

Once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Südtirol (South Tyrol) was annexed by Italy in 1919 after World War I. Under fascism, it endured forced Italianisation but it gained semi-autonomous status post-World War II.

More than 70% of the wines produced here are still made in cooperative wineries: a nod to Austrian agricultural tradition.

Despite accounting for less than 1% of Italy’s total vineyard area, Alto Adige produces some of its most acclaimed whites, as well as elegant reds.

This is classic white wine country (accounting for more than 60% of production, according to the consorzio), where linear, mineral Sylvaner and vibrant, aromatic Kerner thrive.

We also find Grüner Veltliner, Müller-Thurgau, Gewürztraminer, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc, all with alpine freshness and finesse.

Kerner, a German crossing of Riesling and Schiava, found a home in the high Isarco Valley of Südtirol, especially at Abbazia di Novacella (Kloster Neustift) – an Augustinian monastery and winery at Bressanone that has been active since the 12th century.

Its steep, 600m-900m terraced vineyards off the main route up to the Brenner Pass, surrounded by forest, produce refined, aromatic wines rooted in glacial moraine, granite and schist – nutrient-poor and mineral-rich soils.

Multi-layered identity

Walking the Sylvaner vineyards behind the abbey, Elias Holzer, marketing director for Italy, reflects: ‘I first feel Tirolese, then Italian, then European.’

The Kerner wine, shaped over decades by oenologist Celestino Lucin, mirrors this layered identity.

Further south in Bassa Atesina, near the gorge of Salorno, lies another frontier: the German-Italian language line close to Trentino province.

Although Pinot Nero (Pinot Noir) arrived in Alto Adige under Austrian rule, it wasn’t until the 1980s that producers such as Franz Haas, Hans Terzer, Luis Raifer and Alois Lageder began elevating its reputation.

Haas took Pinot Nero literally to new heights – up to 1,000m – on terrain ranging from porphyritic sand to limestone-rich clay.

The Haas family has passed down the name Franz for eight winemaking generations, interrupted only under fascist Italianisation, which meant Franz VI became Francesco.

Franz Haas VII believed in Pinot Nero and, reflecting his drive for precision, was one of the producers who pioneered the implementation of screwcap closures for premium wines in Alto Adige, first permitted in DOC wines bottled in 2008.

His collaboration with artist Riccardo Schweizer gave the wines a bold visual identity, appearing for the first time on the labels of a 1987 Pinot Nero bottling released in 1990.

At Eggerhof, the site of one of the family’s vineyards at 1,150m, managing director Andi Punter echoes this experimental spirit: ‘Each year, the ripening season shortens. We’re pushing higher into cooler, forest-backed sites to ensure freshness and longevity.’

Slovenian border

Collio, Friuli Venezia Giulia

Italy’s border with Slovenia, in the far northeast, unfolds like a stunning tapestry of hills beneath the Julian Alps, but the frontier is shaped by geopolitics rather than geology.

After World War I, these lands passed from Austria to Italy. Post-World War II, the north Adriatic was split between Yugoslavia and Italy; Slovenia finally gained independence in 1991.

On these hills, viticulture thrived thanks to the unique ponca soil – a well-draining mix of marl and sandstone locally known as flysch – and the fierce Bora wind.

Ponca enables the vines’ roots to drive deep into the soil in search of water. It also retains daytime heat but cools quickly at night, which concentrates flavours, preserves acidity and gives bright, mineral-driven white wines.

Friulano – formerly Tocai Friulano until a 2006 EU ruling enforced the name change – is a cornerstone grape in Friuli Venezia Giulia.

When the Collio DOC was established in the late 1960s, it focused on Friulano but, since 2007, the DOC permits multiple white varieties.

Likening the wine to the locals, Paolo Corso (pictured, below), long-time oenologist at Borgo Conventi, near Farra d’Isonzo, and vice-president of the Collio consorzio, states: ‘In Friuli we drink Friulano. It is quiet, reserved and very well balanced.’

Ribolla Gialla (Rebula over in Slovenia) is shedding its skin in Collio. Historical producers such as Primosic champion the variety with textured, amber-hued macerated wines.

Nicola, one of the new Primosic generation, thinks of himself as Mittel-European and Julian (as in, of the mountains), saying: ‘Ribolla Gialla was our farmer ancestors’ wine. They would leave the grapes to macerate until they finished other agricultural work.’

Scarred landscape

The Primosic winery sits on a ridge overlooking the Isonzo (Soča in Slovenia) river valley, where the Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies once clashed.

Co-owner Marko Primosic says: ‘The scars of the war run deep. We still find unexploded ammunition in fields that have been cultivated for the last 70 years from a war that happened 100 years ago.’

Based just 15km to the west, the Edi Keber winery is now run by Edi’s son and daughter Kristian and Veronika Keber.

As well as this Collio winery, Kristian also runs a second winery across the border in the Brda region, where he makes a single blended white.

Kristian recalls running through the fields to his grandmother’s house as a child, in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Slovenia.

‘The border is not between people,’ he says. ‘We were all families.’ Kristian makes just one wine in Italy, a biodynamic white Collio blend of native varieties (see recommendations, below).

He believes that knowledge ferments at frontiers and is experimenting with permaculture, planting vines next to fruit trees, along with legumes and grains, as was done by farming families in the past.

‘It’s difficult to function at the border because of un-unified European bureaucracy,’ he asserts. ‘I prefer a Europe that removes the concept of nations but keeps the concept of cultures.’

Eight fabulous, Italian white wines shaped by the Alps

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National Prosecco Day is celebrated annually on 13 August, and what better way to join the celebrations than by popping open an award-winning bottle of the bubbles?

Recently announced, Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) 2025 results saw 173 Prosecco wines awarded a medal by some of the world’s leading wine experts, including one Platinum and seven Golds (two of which are Value Golds – wines under £15).

Well-crafted wines can be found from Valdobbiadene and Conegliano, with the Platinum medal (97 points) awarded to a wine from Prosecco Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze and four Gold medals (95-96 points) awarded to Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Superiore.

Scroll down to discover 15 top-scoring Prosecco wines from DWWA 2025

Established in 2009, and updated in 2019 to include the official identification of 43 hillside sites or ‘Rive,’ wines from this DOCG have attributed to the recent surge in Prosecco quality, accompanying this wine’s rise in global popularity. At this year’s competition, Nebbia, Brut, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore Rive 2024 received a Gold medal with 95 points.

But it’s not just quality to note of the top-scoring Proseccos from DWWA 2025 – there’s style to consider too, with various examples ranging from floral and fruity characteristics to savoury and nutty.

As a guide, in both Valdobbiadene and Conegliano, Proseccos tend to be more fruity in character, whereas to their west, the smaller DOCG Asolo Prosecco produces styles that are more mineral, savoury and linear.

For complexity, quality and a diversity of styles and sub-regions, the below 15 award-winning Prosecco wines from Veneto are well worth a try this National Prosecco Day and beyond. Discover many more on our results site at awards.decanter.com

What will you be toasting National Prosecco Day with? Share with us on social @decanterawards.

DWWA 2025: 15 award-winning Prosecco wines to try

Ruggeri, Brut, Prosecco Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze 2023

Platinum, 97 points

Exuberant lemon blossom, ripe pear and apple aromas glisten over the creamy mousse which ripples elegantly through the palate. A fine tension of acidity adds to the charm and culminates in a lush tropical fruit finale. Alcohol 11.5%

Dei Vescovi, Brut, Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Superiore 2023 magnum

Gold, 95 points

Enchanting sweet florals, pears and citrus vibrate across the tangy palate, with a soft, supple mousse, salty acidity and freshly cut melon note to end. Alc 12%

Le Manzane, 20.10 Extra Dry, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore 2023

Gold, 95 points

A rush of green apple and lemon energy leaps over the nose and palate with a soft, bready note to follow. Creamy and fresh with a salty finish. Alc 11.5%

Montelvini, Collezione Serenitatis Extra Dry, Prosecco Asolo Superiore NV

Value Gold, 95 points

Delicate fresh green pear and apple infuse gently with the creamy abundance of the mousse, perfectly underpinned by a firm acidity and lush, sweet lemon length. Alc 11.5%

Nebbia, Brut, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore Rive 2024

Gold, 95 points

Scatterings of fresh herbs, jasmine flowers and lemon rind dance under the nose and linger over the fleshy nectarine palate. Long and vital with a fine perlage. Alc 11.5%

Spar, Extra Dry, Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Superiore NV

Value Gold, 95 points

Authentic and pure with green apple, lemon and pear fruits which merge flawlessly with the supple, orange blossom mousse. Zippy and crisp on the finish. Alc 11%

Terre del Cima, Extra Dry, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore 2023

Gold, 95 points

Brilliant lemon and apple flavours with hints of almond and bread. Dazzlingly fresh and limpid with a refined mousse and beautiful saline finish. Shows great typicity. Alc 11.5%

Naonis, Extra Dry, Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Superiore 2024

Silver, 94 points

Wonderful freshness and fruit with lemon and green apple characters leading on to a harmonious palate with a long, fine mousse. Alc 11.5%

Tenuta degli Ultimi, Biancariva Collalto Brut, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore Rive 2013

Silver, 93 points

A complex, mature style with lots of dried flower, honey and bruised-apple fruit. Very dry palate, fresh and structured, vibrant. Alc 11.5%

Andreola, Col del Forno Brut, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore Rive 2024

Silver, 92 points

Restrained aromatics of lemon rind, white flowers and pear. Complex and zesty on the palate with a fine mousse. Alc 11.5%

Biancavigna, Extra Dry, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore 2024

Silver, 92 points

Hints of alpine meadow and yellow fruit on the nose. Fresh notes of flowers, minerals and sea breeze with a lively finish. Alc 11.5%

Col Vetoraz, Dry, Prosecco Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze 2024

Silver, 92 points

Fine bubbles and a citrus, acacia nose with pear and marzipan suggestions. Lovely texture, complexity and persistence. Alc 11.5%

Divigna, Valderustè Biologico Extra Brut, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore 2024

Silver, 91 points

Exuberant pear, blossom and white peach aromatics. Lovely purity. Bright and drier than expected on the palate; nice creamy mousse. Alc 11.5%

Luca Ricci, Le Fade Extra Dry, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore NV

Silver, 91 points

Fragrant almond, lemon and subtle brioche notes on the nose. Elegant with subtle stone fruit characters and a mineral finish. Alc 11%

Sacchetto, Fili Prosecco Extra Dry, Prosecco NV

Silver, 91 points

Clean, floral nose with apple and elderflower characters. Rich and complex palate with fresh, linear acidity and good length. Alc 11.5%

Search all DWWA 2025 results

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Tucked between northern Italy’s mountains and shaped by Alpine winds, Tenuta San Leonardo produces some of the country’s most refined wines in one of its most biodiverse landscapes.

I recently sat down with Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga, who now leads the estate, to talk light, legacy, elegance, and what it means to build a garden just for winter.

Tasting note of the recent 2020 vintage of San Leonardo below

Victoria Daskal: You’re located in quite a striking part of Italy. Can you describe San Leonardo’s setting?

Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga: We’re exactly halfway between Verona and Trento, in the Adige Valley. It’s a narrow strip — only 800 metres wide — framed by mountains that climb to nearly 2,000 metres.

We’re low in altitude, just 120 metres above sea level, but the vertical contrast is dramatic. Lake Garda nearby gives us this thermic wind, Ora del Garda, which blows like clockwork every afternoon. It keeps the air moving and the vines healthy.

VD: Does that geography shape the wines?

AGG: Completely. The valley runs north to south, and the mountains shade us for hours. We lose about three and a half hours of direct sunlight daily. There’s no golden hour at San Leonardo — no Instagram sunsets.

But we gain something more important: indirect, luminous light, plus dramatic thermic shifts. The air floods cold at night, and by day it warms quickly. It’s excellent for photosynthesis and freshness. Our wines tend to have low alcohol, but a lot of flavour concentration.

VD: How would you sum up your terroir in three words?

AGG: Extreme. Hydrated. Bright. The extremes come from our thermic range—lush summers, hard winters. With big drops in temperature between day and night.

We have abundant mountain water that filters through the rocks, emerging like mineral springs keeping the vines and vegetation hydrated. And the light is intense, though indirect. A quiet brilliance.

VD: Your family is renowned for their gardens. When did this passion start?

AGG: Gardening is almost as important to us as winemaking. My great-great-grandfather was inspired by La Belle Époque in Paris. He built Villa Gresti in the Liberty style in the 1870s and surrounded it with exotic gardens.

Later, my grandmother created a remarkable garden near Rome called La Landriana with Russell Page, one of the most important British garden architects. That shaped my father, and it shaped me.

VD: What about at San Leonardo? Are you working on any new garden projects?

AGG: Yes — a winter garden. Our region is stunning from April to November, but winter is harsh, brown, silent. I want to create a space that blooms even in January, full of fragrance and shelter for birds.

It will be open-air but enclosed by earth—like a round bowl carved from the land. Inside we’re planting Calycanthus, hellebores; plants that are beautiful in the cold. A garden for a sombre season.

VD: Let’s talk wine. You joined your father at San Leonardo at a very young age. What was your vision then?

AGG: At the time, the world wanted big, extracted, oaky wines. I was 23 and thought I knew better. I pushed my father to make San Leonardo more ‘contemporary’. I even suggested blending Teroldego into the flagship wine, as part of the ‘glocal’ (global and local) trend.

He looked at me and said: “You’re an idiot. Go back to the office.” And he was right. He had a very clear vision of what a wine was. Elegance was always the main drive of his wine production.

VD: But you did make important changes eventually — particularly with white wines.

AGG: Yes, in 2011 I launched Vette, a Sauvignon Blanc. It’s vibrant, floral, and stainless steel–fermented with bâtonnage to give it texture. Later we introduced Riesling, which is more gastronomic. That one sees a year in 900-litre Stockinger oak barrels with bâtonnage. I love a bit of oak in whites — it gives finesse. But I don’t like to feel oak in reds.

VD: Are those white wines from your own vineyards?

AGG: Currently, we buy the grapes from seven high-altitude plots, between 200 and 700 metres. Land is impossibly expensive here — half a million euros per hectare, if you can even find it.

Most plots are 1.5 hectares, and 95% of the wine in our region is made by two huge co-ops. But we are in the process of buying a small vineyard of Riesling that also contains some rows of Pinot Bianco.

VD: You’ve been shifting toward organic farming. Where do you stand now?

AGG: We’re fully certified organic. We use many biodynamic practices too, like moon cycles, but I wouldn’t say we’re fully biodynamic. The reds can’t be certified because we still buy some grapes, but the philosophy is there: treating the vineyard as a living thing.

VD: Besides moving to organic, and introducing white wine, what other major changes did you make at the estate?

AGG: I changed the way we sell our wines. My father had one distributor for the whole of Italy. Today, we have 123 agents. It’s much more work — small orders, direct to restaurants, not big pallet drops.

But it creates relationships, and those matter. Fifty percent of our wine now stays in Italy. The rest goes to 67 markets — US, UK, Switzerland, Germany… even Kazakhstan. I also have hopes for selling to Lebanon and India.

VD: What’s next on the horizon for San Leonardo?

AGG: Sincerely, I don’t want to grow San Leonardo more than it is already. Actually I reduced the size, the production is more manageable and sustainable. We can concentrate on our identity and vision.

Tasting San Leonardo 2020:

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For all the attention lavished on Barolo and Barbaresco, the noble Nebbiolo grape gets very little of its own airtime. What is Nebbiolo when it isn’t either of these?

In the greater Langhe area – which also includes Roero – the answer is two confusingly overlapping denominations of Langhe Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo d’Alba.

Without going into the minutiae of the specific regulations that distinguish the two, together these two DOCs provide producers with an outlet for non-DOCG interpretations.

Michaela’s pick of the 2022 and 2023 Langhe Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo d’Alba below

For Nebbiolo lovers, they offer a treasure trove of diverse expressions that are typically less expensive and more immediately drinkable.

Given less stringent ageing requirements, these Nebbiolos are typically released sooner than producers’ DOCG bottlings of the same vintage.

As such, current releases hail from 2022 and 2023. Despite being marked by drought and heat, both years managed to yield wines with remarkable freshness and vibrancy.

A passing resemblance

Vintages aside, style is greatly impacted by estate philosophy. Most winemakers are adamant that they aren’t trying to produce a ‘baby Barolo’.

Nevertheless, some do bear a greater resemblance to DOCG wines than others – particularly those made from declassified Barolo or Barbaresco grapes and with longer ageing in wood.

Of these, Bartolo Mascarello and Giuseppe Rinaldi’s savoury 2022s are worth seeking out. They also represent greater accessibility – both in terms of drinking and price – within the context of their respective ranges. Gian Luca Colombo’s Meretto is another must-try if you can find it.

Departing from this traditional approach, Lalù favours maturation in a combination of cement and wood to reduce the impact of the latter. The 2023 impresses for its brightness of fruit and sophisticated texture.

Equally joyful, Cascina Penna Currado’s 100% whole-berry fermented Bricco Lago spends just a few months in large cask.

Others examples see no wood at all. As Valter Fissore at Elvio Cogno states: ‘It is supposed to be a friendly wine for drinking chilled in the summer.’

He purchased a vineyard outside the DOCG zone specifically for Langhe Nebbiolo and the 2023 Montegrilli is a deliciously fruity and crisp Nebbiolo. Azelia’s 2022 is a little bit richer but still in the same vein, and both boast excellent value.

One of my favourite examples of ‘naked’ Nebbiolo is Rivetto’s amphora-aged Vigna Lirano.

A special mention must be made of the Roero region, where predominantly sandy soil lends itself to a lighter, more elegant rendering of Nebbiolo. Mauro Molino’s 2023 is a lovely value-driven version.

Ratcheting it up a few notches, Bruno Giacosa and Sandrone’s bottlings from the Valmaggiore cru were two of my top picks of the entire report.

Michaela’s 25 top Langhe Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo d’Alba to try:

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Super-premium whites, Primo Grande Cuvée and Rarity – both Platinum Medal winners at the Decanter World Awards and ‘100 pointers’ across the wine press at large – may be Cantina Terlano’s flagship wines, but delve deeper and you’ll find stunning quality and value throughout the entire portfolio.

This exemplary co-operative lies less than 10 kilometres west of Bolzano, regional capital of the Alto Adige in northeast Italy.

Notes and scores for six Cantina Terlano wines below

Michael Garner: Cantina Terlano’s white wines have extraordinary ageing potential and need time in bottle to develop, yet the reds are delicious to drink young. How do you explain this apparent anomaly?

Klaus Gasser: This is white wine country. We’re on the left bank of the Adige and growing conditions here are pretty much unique. It’s cooler and the soils have a much higher limestone content over the river.

The village itself sits in the crater of an extinct volcano with mainly sandy, fast-draining, siliceous soils over a bedrock of red porphyry.

We have a very particular microclimate, with huge differences between day and night-time temperatures governed by our proximity to the Alps and warm afternoon breezes which blow up from the south.

White grapes are planted at up to 900 metres, many on steep slopes. As a result, our whites demonstrate great nervosity and tension: marked sapidity and above-average acid levels promise great longevity thanks to the low pH of the soils.

Our legendary winemaker Sebastian Stocker was the first to recognise and start developing this potential. The reds, however, are mainly from lower-lying vineyards on the eastern side of the village towards Bolzano: they’re a very different proposition, though they can age quite well too.

MG: How do you highlight these very distinctive characteristics?

Rudi Kofler: It’s mainly the age of the vines: we use younger ones for our Tradition range and older for our Selection and Riserva wines. Our aim is to maintain fruit integrity and purity through to the bottle, so we avoid cold-maceration and aromatic yeasts.

We ferment the simpler wines at cool temperatures (around 18-19 ℃) in stainless steel, with up to around six months of lees ageing.

We prefer whole-bunch fermentation for the Selection range, and slightly higher fermentation temperatures with a mixture of large wood and stainless steel plus longer lees ageing, because the fruit is more concentrated.

MG: What about your background in wine?

RK: After studying agronomy, I worked at Cantina San Michele Appiano under Hans Terzer between 1997 and 1999, then moved to Terlano where Hartmann Dona was the head oenologist. He left in 2002 and I took over. The spirit of Sebastian Stocker lives on here, so I’ve followed in the footsteps of three great local winemakers.

MG: Can you explain a little more about the innovations Stocker brought in?

RK: Under his guidance the winery acquired its first stainless steel vats in 1977; they proved perfect for the singular kind of storage regime he was interested in and the effects of lengthy lees ageing in particular.

These days our Rarity wine is fermented and undergoes malolactic in large wooden barrels. It stays there for a year with regular batonnage and is then transferred to those original stainless steel drums and stored for 10-12 years – sometimes more – on the noble lees.

The wine is still turbid so we don’t stir the lees any further. People say that the yeast autolysis process is over after about four years, but we’ve seen how our wines go on developing long after that. Stocker laid the groundwork for us.

MG: How have the warmer vintages of the last decade affected the character of your wines?

KG: We’ve been lucky so far. The red wines have benefitted and have a much riper style. Overall there’s better phenolic maturity but also greater focus on getting the picking date just right to avoid over-ripeness.

The changes we’ve seen are more in terms of random patterns, hotter spells certainly, but seriously cold snaps and an increased danger of hail. But we’re already used to extremes here!

RK: Ironically, we were harvesting earlier in the first decade of this century than the second! In 2021 we picked our white grapes in October, about a month later than usual. But we don’t pick early for higher acid levels: our style is based on low yields of perfectly mature grapes.

MG: Finally the future. Which wines will carry the name of Terlano forward?

KG: Over time, Pinot Bianco, Sauvignon and Chardonnay have established themselves as the grapes that grow best here.

They work both as single varieties (eg Pinot Bianco for Rarity or Sauvignon Blanc for Quarz) and in combination (eg Primo Grande Cuvée or Terlaner Nova Domus).

Terlaner Cuvée, a blend of all three grapes, is actually the original wine of the area; varietals didn’t take off until the 1970s.

Factbox: Terlano

Founded: 1893 (as a cooperative)

Current members: 143

Hectares under vine: 190

White varieties: Pinot Bianco, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Gewürztraminer, Müller Thurgau

Red varieties: Lagrein, Pinot Nero, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon

Product ranges: In addition to Primo and Rarity, there are two ranges: Selection is the single-vineyard or Riserva line, and Tradition the introductory line consisting mainly of single varietals.

Annual average production: 1.5m bottles

Tasting Terlano: Six of the best

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The vineyards appear healthy and don’t need irrigation, unlike on the southern slopes, where water assistance for the vines has been the norm for years. An electric driverless van passes by on the road, shuttling between wineries and a digitally managed hub, reducing logistics costs and environmental impact. It’s the summer of 2055, the Earth is boiling and viticulture has had to adapt. Just think, all of this had been predicted long before…

In 2024, all hell broke loose in the celebrated Piedmont wine region. The then president of the local Barolo consorzio, Matteo Ascheri, tackled the issue of climate change head-on with a series of radical proposals, including the lifting of the ban, established in the 1966 regulations, on planting Nebbiolo grapes destined for Barolo on north-facing hillsides. The debate was heated. The winemakers opposed to the proposal prevailed, citing a loss of biodiversity (the northern slopes of the Langhe hills are carpeted with woods or crops other than vines), as well as a negative impact on the quality of Nebbiolo grapes, traditionally planted on the southern slopes most exposed to the sun.

Sergio Germano, the consorzio’s new president, elected last May, faces the same challenges as his predecessor, from climate change to the spread of vine diseases. He suggests, instead, facing them ‘one step at a time’, as farmers do: ‘In the vineyards we are experimenting with new forms of leaf management, we are evaluating the use of shade films, anti-hail barriers, and we are open to the use of controlled irrigation.’ In his opinion, ‘Barolo is healthy.’ The numbers seem to prove him right: a record 15 million bottles were exported in 2023, the Barolo DOCG consorzio reports, and the average value of vineyards is said to exceed €1 million per hectare.

The Barolo district, with its reputation as an El Dorado for investors, represents a winning model. Even more important is the fact that the ‘king of wines’ has never been so good and reliable. Its top bottlings are more enjoyable, elegant and refined than the fruit bombs of a decade ago, the vintage trend is constantly positive and average quality is high. Barolo seems to have reached its zenith. The rules, in short, with their rigidity and limits, seem to be in step with the times. But are we sure that’s true?

Over the last century and a half, the map of Barolo wine has changed several times. Scholars such as Lorenzo Fantini, Ferdinando Vignolo Lutati and Renato Ratti have sifted through every clod of the Langhe, setting down on paper the territories best suited to Nebbiolo, according to the tastes of their respective eras. Some vineyards have thus acquired a deserved fame over time, but no map is set in stone.

The legendary ‘vineyards of the south’ may no longer represent the spearhead of Barolo in times ahead that promise to be torrid. It’s no coincidence that sub-areas once hardly considered are already gaining ground, such as Castelletto in Monforte d’Alba, with its east-southeast exposure and fine, fresh Barolo wines. Pointing the compass even further north might not be a sacrilege: after all, the northern slopes of the Langhe hills are already planted with vines, even with Nebbiolo grapes – they can’t boast the Barolo denomination, however, and must be bottled as Langhe Nebbiolo DOC.

The objections to Ascheri’s trenchant proposals were motivated by an all-out defense of the status quo, and north-facing Barolo has been passed off as taboo: but weren’t barriques and leaf-thinning also taboo when they were introduced here in the 1980s? ‘Optimising the pleasantness of Barolo’, Germano’s objective, may require stronger decisions than a well-combed leaf canopy. However, I’m certain that when the time comes, the Langhe’s winemakers will know how to take them, as has always happened in this noble wine’s history, and will project themselves into the future without fear of taking new paths.

In my glass this month

Who said that Barolo can’t be appreciated when it’s very young? In uncorking a bottle of Elio Altare’s Arborina Barolo 2021 (£85 Justerini & Brooks), I feel like I have done nothing wrong. The wine already has all its own credentials: on the nose it’s fruity and spicy, with notes of rose petals; on the palate it’s tasty, with velvety tannins, the acidity is perfectly balanced and the finish recalls hints of undergrowth and soil. I could have left it to sit in my cellar for another 15-20 years, but I just couldn’t resist!

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Deeply rooted in the winemaking history of Piedmont, Asti DOCG and Moscato d’Asti DOCG deserve greater attention.

A UNESCO World Heritage site of timeless charm, the region’s vineyards are planted on the sun-exposed slopes of limestone hills.

The vineyard area of these two denominations is the largest in Piedmont, with roughly 10,000ha spread across the three provinces of Alessandria, Asti and Cuneo, and can be split into two distinct macro-zones: the steeper, tougher soils of the Langhe and the gentler hills of Monferrato.

We are in the land of Moscato Bianco, part of the extensive family of Moscati present all over Europe and loved by noble courts in past t centuries for its perfumes and refreshing sweetness.

See notes and scores for 18 effervescent Asti wines below

Asti Spumante: A natural ‘lo-wine’

Representing almost two-thirds of Asti’s total annual production of 90 million bottles, Asti Spumante is mostly made using the tank or Charmat method – or should I say the Martinotti method, given that the technique was invented in 1895 by the then director of the oenological institute in Asti, Federico Martinotti.

Primary fermentation is halted by cooling the tanks, retaining the wine’s natural sugars and resulting in a lower alcohol content, typically around 7%-9%. The wine’s vibrant bubbles arise from secondary fermentation and the result is a smooth, round and creamy spumante.

Asti Spumante is incredibly versatile, pairing beautifully with light desserts and creamy cheeses, but also serving as an ideal aperitif.

In the last few years, a small group of winemakers has begun working on a more austere, tense and bone-dry version of Asti Spumante to celebrate its vibrant character with the touch of salinity the limestone soil can provide.

Moscato d’Asti: Froth & fruit

The production method for Moscato d’Asti involves lighter pressure during fermentation, creating a soft effervescence.

As a result, it has to be classified under the frizzante category. Its lower level of alcohol – around 5%-6% – and highly aromatic expression of ripe, zesty fruit and enticing orange blossom elements are complemented by some intense residual sugar.

The grapes are harvested by hand and yields for Moscato d’Asti are distinctly lower than for its fully sparkling counterpart.

Some of the wines can age surprisingly well, for 10-20 years – usually those from older vines and from the single-vineyard ‘sorì’ (the term refers to a very steep piece of land) or from the former sub-zone Canelli, which was elevated to a separate DOCG in 2023. These wines also typically offer a fuller body and more complex balsamic and saffron notes.

There’s a striking consistency across all of the 2024s I’ve tasted: the wines show explosive papaya, quince and pineapple notes combined with a floral touch and a ginger and lime twist, and that ‘piemontese feeling’ of mineral complexity.

18 effervescent Asti wines

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There’ll be a snowy photo of the vines in winter, or merry harvesters throwing their baskets in the air, with a scrawled signature. Occasionally I’m sent a list of wines with all the scores obtained in the previous year, like a wonk’s school report; or I get a request for a date – at one of the wine fairs the owners will soon attend. I glance, note… recycle.

And then out tumbled this: ‘What I Believe: Welcome to the corner of my consciousness.’ I unfolded the brightly coloured A2 sheet. On it, there were 10 points, beginning with ‘Enthusiasm’ (great!) and ending with ‘You are what you think, feel and do’ (true).

The sheet came from Enrico Rivetto, pictured wearing a fool’s cap from which a bunch of grapes dangled. He’s a fourth-generation Barolo producer with vineyards in Serralunga, the DOCG’s most desirable commune, though point eight stressed that ‘Vineyards are not owned but kept’. He makes lovely wines (I mentioned one with my February column): I’m sure he received a shaking of decent scores last year. But point five was ‘Less competition, more comprehension’, so he’s clearly not a scores guy. ‘I learned to unlearn’ sounded promising; ‘One in all, all in one’ needed further investigation. ‘Monoculture: what a bore’: that’s an intriguing tack for a wine-grower to take. ‘Plants speak,’ he believes, with King Charles III. I’m wholly in favour of ‘Imagine to create’. And wine itself? ‘It’s a kind of magic’, he says in point nine. ‘A sweet spell that … “uncorks people” and prepares them to listen’.

This I didn’t recycle; I hooked up with him on Teams instead.

I discovered a committed and passionate dissenter. ‘Wine is not the goal, but a tool to do something,’ he told me. ‘Piedmont is a conservative area, very closed. People revere you because you’re a “Barolo producer”. Many growers just think about making a great wine, making more money. This isn’t good for me. Why do we make wine? We could do other things. Why are we doing this? Many wine-growers don’t know how to answer that question, though it touches the soul.’

His answer? ‘Listen to the best teacher in the world: nature.’ He’s trying to turn his estate not into a million-euro business or a ‘fine-wine destination’ but ‘a place of beauty, a place to produce happiness’. So – after looking at himself squarely in the mirror, and asking ‘Are you really going to tear up Nebbiolo to plant rosehips?’ – he did indeed uproot some of his vine rows in order to create biodiverse hedge corridors, and slowly returned the estate to being a mixed-use farm which also produces spelt and other ancient grains, vegetables, fresh fruit for jams and juices, and medicinal herbs for essential oils. ‘The more I built this new system, the more people came and knocked at my door: a bee-keeper, a truffle farmer. Now we have a home-schooling project: we have 24 children coming here every day. Non-profit, to help parents transfer their skills to their children in a natural environment. To play the guitar, to prune a vine, to do things with energy and enthusiasm.’

It hasn’t all gone to plan, of course. ‘Nature is a perfect system, but in nature there is everything, good and evil, all in balance. It’s difficult to accept this, but everything is part of that one system, from bread yeast to star dust. Including the things we don’t like – perhaps they’re a stimulation to do better. I planted 1,000 trees; 20% died. I learned that nothing grows around a walnut tree. I used amphorae, terracotta; I made mistakes. When you do something new, it’s normal to make mistakes.’

Enrico’s lesson, though, for those who feel that ‘business as usual’ in the wine world is a misguided or troubled pursuit is ‘do something’.

‘It’s not enough just to talk in the bar or online,’ he says. ‘Don’t just protest, get angry, make a noise. You have an internal power – it’s called enthusiasm. You have to be the protagonist of your micro-world. Do something.’

In my glass this month

Just back from a day at Montpellier’s Millésime Bio trade fair, where I caught up with Hildegard Horat, another dissenter, of the admirable La Grange de Quatre Sous in Languedoc. I’ve always admired her wonderful Cabernet-based Lo Molin (we tried the still-young 2016) but had forgotten how good the white Bu N’Daw is: pure Petite Arvine (Hildegard is Swiss). Aged in earthenware, the 2023 is saline, sappy and fresh, its flavours a gentle résumé of celery and angelica – fine organic Languedoc white wine.

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In the beginning, there was only one Prosecco: Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene, recognised (initally as a DOC) by Italian wine law in 1969.

Served in households whose kitchen shelves boasted copies of late restaurateur Russell Norman’s Polpo, it broke into the UK as a cool, casual, unpretentious sparkling wine.

By the late 2000s, demand outstripped supply and in 2009, the original Conegliano Valdobbiadene region was elevated to DOCG status, along with neighbouring Asolo, while a new Prosecco DOC was created across a vast area of northeast Italy, running from Vicenza in the Veneto to Trieste on the Slovenian border.

Scroll down for Jason’s pick of Prosecco Superiore

Although the subsequent boom was good for producers in both zones, growers in the original heartlands are now increasingly concerned that their DOCG wines are being perceived as little more than higher-priced Prosecco DOC.

Enter Diego Tomasi, current director of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene consorzio, who has made it his mission to highlight the unique qualities of Prosecco Superiore DOCG and demonstrate what makes it truly superior(e) to Prosecco DOC.

Prosecco Professore

Quietly spoken and elegantly dressed, Tomasi brings with him a wealth of technical knowledge from a distinguished career in the prestigious Conegliano Scuola Enologica wine school.

Affectionately known as Il Professore, his work has demonstrated that complex soils, steep slopes, lower yields and hand harvesting make better wines.

‘Not all Prosecco is created equal,’ Tomasi says. ‘Prosecco Superiore comes from an old terroir. Glera is our indigenous variety and it has been here for 300 years. It is not like the DOC area, where other varieties were removed to plant Glera just because there was a market.’

Under Tomasi’s directorship, new initiatives are being enacted to distinguish Prosecco Superiore DOCG from the wines made on the plains, which are sold as Prosecco DOC.

It’s a challenge; consorzio data for 2023 show that the DOC produced 618 million bottles, overshadowing the DOCG’s 92.5m – meaning Prosecco Superiore is considerably harder to find than the ubiquitous Prosecco DOC.

Tomasi has devoted his professional life to this territory, however, and he is determined to try.

The Rive

One of his focuses has been the 43 Rive (pronounced ‘REE-veh’), created in 2009 when the DOCG was formed, and which currently make up about 4.2% of the vineyard surface.

All Rive wines must display both the name of the Riva and a vintage date on the bottle.

‘A Riva is a steep vineyard that has complex soils, lower yields and a unique microclimate,’ Tomasi says. ‘Only in these sites do we have the maximum expression of aroma.’

Demanding terrain

The vertiginous Rive vineyards are much less fertile than those on the DOC plains, meaning yields here are limited to a maximum of 13,000kg/ha, similar to (and in some instances, and particular sites, lower than) those in Champagne.

‘If you go over this, to 18 tonnes per hectare as in the DOC, you lose a lot of Glera’s flavour,’ Tomasi remarks. The landscape might be picturesque, but growing and harvesting grapes here is nothing short of heroic.

On these daunting slopes, it’s thought to take between 600 and 800 hours a year to work one hectare of vines, compared to about 150 hours on the mechanised DOC plains. Everything has to be done by hand and on foot, and vines are often planted on narrow, hard-to-work terraces less than a metre wide, known locally as ciglioni.

The value of the Rive isn’t just in terroir expression, but also as a focus for sustaining the agricultural heritage of the region.

‘The Rive express hard work, human tenacity, the beauty of the landscape and the union between the vine and its caretaker,’ Tomasi says.

A new approach

Beyond the vineyards, Prosecco Superiore producers are exploring more ambitious methods of making their wines.

While most Prosecco DOC is bottled within a month or two of fermentation, producers in the DOCG are experimenting with keeping the wine in contact with the fermentation yeasts for longer.

Extended lees contact, from four to six months, can ‘create aromatic complexity, harmonise the flavours and enhance the creaminess of the bubbles’, according to Tomasi.

At Ruggeri, winemaker Fabio Roversi has been experimenting with extending lees contact from several weeks, which is typical, to several months or more.

‘At the end of secondary fermentation, we have a resting period of the wine in the autoclave for up to six months, which adds a delicate flavour of breadcrumbs and yeast,’ he says. ‘We want to show how Glera can evolve and gain complexity.’

Nearly all Prosecco Superiore is made using the Martinotti method, which requires a second fermentation under pressure in a specialised tank called an autoclave. This process was developed in Conegliano, and was at one point as unique to Prosecco as the traditional method was to Champagne.

Prior to the production of the first Martinotti-method Prosecco in 1939, the wines were made according to the ancestral method, involving a second fermentation in bottle.

But unlike the traditional method practised in Champagne (also a secondary fermentation in the bottle), ancestral method wines aren’t disgorged of their sediment or given a dosage (the addition of sugar solution before the bottle is resealed), leaving them cloudy and often bone dry.

Growing in popularity

Since 2019, this method has been sanctioned in the DOCG under the name sui lieviti (‘on the lees’). Although current production volumes are comparatively small, Tomasi notes that interest is growing, as the wines lend themselves more easily to pairing with food.

Sales of this style were up by 5% in 2024, to 157,400 bottles, according to the consorzio. Producers such as L’Antica Quercia (above) believe that sui lieviti Prosecco can mature and improve in the bottle, just like a still wine.

Its ‘A’ 2020 is a convincing argument for this style. Reevaluating the received wisdom on lees ageing has also led producers to question the assumption that Prosecco is best drunk in the first year after bottling.

‘Prosecco Superiore can evolve pleasantly over three to five years,’ Tomasi explains. ‘The result is a more grown-up, mature version.’

Some producers now hold wines back in their cellars to gauge the evolution in bottle, although the early signs are that the sui lieviti wines offer much more character after a few years than Martinotti-method Prosecco, due to the preservative qualities of the lees and Glera’s delicate nature.

Evolving styles & pairing with food

In the past, Prosecco Superiore was predominantly extra dry, with a dosage of 12-17g/L balancing out naturally high acids to give an off-dry sparkling wine. This remains the most popular style, accounting for more than half of production, and there are many superb examples, such as the Giustino B from Ruggeri.

But a warming climate has delivered lower acidities than in the past, meaning that – as in other sparkling wine regions – there has been a trend towards lower dosage and a drier style.

Today, brut (theoretically 0-12g/L, but typically not below 6g/L) and extra brut (under 6g/L) are growing rapidly in popularity; according to Tomasi, brut’s market share has risen from 20% in 2014 to 40% in 2024.

Over the same period, extra brut has risen to 3% from almost zero.

Andrea Miotto (second generation winemaker at Cantina Miotto) suggests: ‘Although the extra dry is better for an aperitivo, brut is something that matches well with small, simple dishes. Think about the traditional food of Venice and try sardines, crostini or baccala [salted cod], or even some risotto.’

The next generation

Looking to the future, Tomasi is especially proud of a new initiative called the Young Club, founded in April 2023 and designed to bring together younger generations working in the DOCG.

‘We rely on their desire to improve, their sensitivity to sustainability issues and their ability to embrace change,’ he says. More than 70 individuals under the age of 35 participate, and members hold a variety of roles in the wine industry.

Anna Nardi, director and brand ambassador at Perlage Winery – an organic pioneer – is part of the group.

‘We want to bring fresh ideas and identify areas for improvement,’ she says. ‘It’s inspiring to see young minds collaborating to nurture historic denominations, and refreshing to see competitors viewing one another as colleagues and, often, friends.’

The group’s objectives are to enhance quality, improve communication and increase sustainability. Research trips to Champagne and Franciacorta have been organised, and market research is being undertaken to find out how young drinkers feel about Prosecco Superiore DOCG.

What’s in a name…

But there is one final challenge for Tomasi. The contorted, syncopated vineyards of the DOCG heartlands seem to be reflected in its tongue-twisting name: Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG – and that’s before you even add the name of the Rive.

Tomasi acknowledges that this creates the wrong kind of mouthful, even for native Italian speakers. Consultations are underway to find something catchier, without losing the word ‘Prosecco’, which has its historical origins in these hills.

It’s a slow process so, for now, the easiest way to rediscover the original Prosecco is to look for the ‘G’ in DOCG on the label, and experiment with the top-quality wines being produced under Rive designations.

Jason’s pick of Prosecco Superiore

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In 2015, top Piedmontese winery Gaja purchased 30ha at 650m in Trezzo Tinella, planting vines and building a new 250,000-bottle winery principally to vinify white grape varieties grown in the new vineyards.

While the new facility is only a 15-minute drive from Gaja’s 19th-century winery in the village of Barbaresco, the vineyards here can be as much as 4°C cooler.

Although the initiative is a response to the warming climate, it also represents a huge investment in the future of Piedmont’s white wines.

Scroll down for David’s pick of Piedmont’s white wines

Located in northwest Italy between the Alps and the Apennines, Piedmont is rightly associated with great red wines.

Ideal conditions for grape-growing are provided by the continental climate, with protection from the worst of the weather by the nearby mountains and a range of hills, mainly of marine origin.

Reds made with Nebbiolo, Barbera and Dolcetto are Piedmont’s best-known wines; however, a largely unnoticed feature in recent years is a significant increase in the plantings of white varieties.

The quality of Piedmont’s white wines made with the likes of Cortese, Arneis, Timorasso, Erbaluce and Nascetta is evident in the glass, supported by planting statistics that are the ultimate proof that producers see an important future for white wines in the region.

Sergio Germano, winemaker at Ettore Germano (pictured below), driven by his own interest in white wines, cites the importance of the technology that’s now available for making whites, including temperature control.

He notes that the new focus on white varieties chimes perfectly with the contemporary trend for drinking lighter, more refreshing and lower-alcohol wines.

The big picture

In the period 2008-2024, according to the Anagrafe Agricola del Piemonte regional database, the total vineyard area in Piedmont remained relatively stable at around 44,500ha.

However, the area of red varieties fell by 11%, while that for white varieties rose by a remarkable 25%. As a result, white varieties increased from 31% to 40% of the total. Plantings of Nebbiolo (red) grew significantly, but it is the exception that proves the rule.

In fact, if plantings of Barbera continue to fall, the red variety will soon be overtaken by Moscato Bianco as the most planted variety in the region.

In terms of total hectares planted, Moscato Bianco is the uncontested queen of white varieties. With 10,425ha in 2024, it has more than three and a half times the plantings of the next most planted white variety, Cortese.

Nearly all of the Moscato grapes are used for tank-method sparkling wine – either Asti or Moscato d’Asti – although a handful of producers make dry, still Moscato wines, including newcomer Emanuele Gambino, who ages his in amphora.

Plantings of the variety have increased by 585ha since 2008, yet this only represents 6% growth; outside the top 10 for percentage growth.

Local heroes

Arneis is the biggest winner in terms of growth in planted areas, gaining 675ha since 2008 to 1,452ha. Of this, 920ha produces Roero Arneis DOCG. A short drive from the Langhe, Roero has distinctive sandy soils, perfect for Arneis.

Its popularity was established in the 1990s, when Barolo and Barbaresco producers led by Vietti and Bruno Giacosa adopted Arneis as their local white grape of choice. More than simply an early-drinking thirst quencher, Arneis is capable of extended ageing.

Matteo Correggia produces a Riserva-category Arneis from old vines. Sealed under screwcap for freshness, it is released with six years of bottle age. Similarly, Angelo Negro has a bottling released after seven years called Sette Anni.

Timorasso is the Piemontese grape currently on everyone’s lips. It has seen the second-largest percentage increase in area and is the rising star of Piedmont’s white wine scene. From a base of just 45ha in 2008 (and a meagre 6ha as recently as 2000), it now accounts for 478ha of vineyard.

Of these, about 400ha are in the previously unfashionable Colli Tortonesi, according to the local consorzio, and this has attracted attention from important Barolo and Barbaresco producers in recent years, including Vietti and Oddero.

The latter has invested in 3ha in Monleale, where Walter Massa revived the fortunes of the variety in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Isabella Oddero (pictured below) couldn’t be more effusive: ‘In our personal experience, we can say that the Timorasso grape grown in the Colli Tortonesi area is a great local variety and has huge potential in terms of complexity, bottle ageing, evolution and elegance.’

Fresh and concentrated on release, Timorasso shows its real quality after three to four years in bottle, developing a remarkable array of Riesling-like petrol aromas alongside herbal and dried stone fruit notes.

In the last decade and a half, Cortese has grown by 260ha to 2,776ha, of which 60% is used for Gavi DOCG. The region’s vineyards have grown considerably from an

initial 250ha when it was made a DOC in 1974.

An inexpensive and popular wine in both the on- and off-trades, achieving higher quality requires lower yields and intensive canopy management.

It is only then that wineries can create Gavi with a real sense of place and with the quality to age in the bottle, as with La Mesma’s Etichetta Nera 2014.

International flavour

Among the international varieties, Chardonnay is by far the most significant; its 1,371ha of vineyard represents a 42% increase since 2008. Much of the region’s Chardonnay is bottled as either Langhe Chardonnay or Piemonte DOC, while the remainder is blended into Alta Langa Viognier DOCG, a traditional-method sparkling wine of rapidly growing importance.

Long-term enthusiasts for Chardonnay include Gaja, with its much-admired Gaia & Rey bottling. In Barbaresco, Ca’ del Baio produces three styles: a wine from younger vines, aged only in stainless steel; another from older vines, which goes through malolactic fermentation and is aged in oak; and a new wine fermented and aged in oak.

In 1996, Matteo Correggia planted Sauvignon Blanc in Roero because he loved the variety. Since 2008, plantings across Piedmont have more than doubled to 260ha.

Furthermore, among other international varieties, Viognier and Riesling have increased from just 0.6ha and 18ha respectively in 2008 to 151ha and 78ha in 2024. Viognier is increasingly being seen as a good match for Piedmont’s warm growing season.

Examples to try include Marziano Abbona’s version from Dogliani.

New names to intrigue

Erbaluce, planted around Caluso, three-quarters of an hour northeast of Turin, has grown by 65% to 373ha in the last decade and a half.

Historically, this great variety was used mostly for making sweet passito style or late-harvest wines, but today, most Erbaluce wines are dry, with some traditional-method sparkling wine also being made.

Erbaluce’s restrained but subtle aromatics – crisp green apple, lemon and florals – combined with its high acidity make the grape suitable for all three styles, as demonstrated by Cieck’s wines.

While Nascetta has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, it hasn’t seen the same level of increased plantings as some of the other white varieties. From a tiny base of just 7ha, it now stands at 68ha.

One reason for its relatively slow growth is that it is strongly associated with the Barolo region, in which it competes directly for vineyard space with the much-in-demand Nebbiolo.

Valter Fissore of Nascetta-pioneer Elvio Cogno explains its appeal: ‘Even if it is a niche wine, more and more wine professionals and wine lovers are discovering and becoming more passionate about Nascetta.

‘Every day, we receive positive feedback and compliments for the high quality of this white wine, which is recognised as one of the great white wines of the Langhe.’

There are several other, even rarer white varieties, such as Baratuciat and Rossese Bianco, that may begin to gain traction in Piedmont in the future.

One thing is clear: while drinkers will undoubtedly continue to treasure the region’s great red wines, there are more and more reasons to reach for the highly characterful, distinctive white wines of Piedmont.

And the real focus of interest should be the indigenous varieties, especially Timorasso, Nascetta and Erbaluce.

They may be new names to learn and new wines to seek out, but they will certainly reward the adventurous drinker.

Piedmont’s white wines

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The Veneto produces more wine than any other region in Italy. Even with the downturn caused by adverse weather conditions in 2023, according to official ISTAT figures the Veneto vinified 10.6 million hectolitres.

The region used to compete with Puglia for record annual production, but these days there is no contest.

Thanks to the staggering 660 million bottles of Prosecco (source: Consorzio Prosecco DOC, 2025) and the lion’s share of the 250 million bottles of the inter-regional Pinot Grigio delle Venezie (source: Consorzio Delle Venezie, 2024), the Veneto makes almost double the production of the southern region.

Scroll down for Richard’s pick of wines from Veneto

But it is not all about volume and monoculture – there is also quality and diversity.

The Veneto has more DOCGs (14) than any other region and a grand total of 53 DOs for wines which range across the whole spectrum from still to sparkling, from dry to sweet, and from fresh and youthful to complex and ageworthy.

I went along to the AIS-Vinetia show to remind myself of this diversity and to catch up with what is happening at the quality end of Venetian winemaking.

AIS is the Assocazione Italiana Sommelier, and the Venetian delegation of the association publishes a critical guide to the wines of the region. They invite the producers featured in the guide to this annual event held in the province of Treviso.

2025’s bumper edition offered over 700 wines to taste from 130 producers, for the most part from small-to medium-scale wineries; some well known, others up and coming.

Slimming down

One of the takeaways from the show is that dry wines are getting drier, and this is particularly apparent in the wines made around Lake Garda.

The soft and fruity Bardolino Chiaretto of the past, for example, is being replaced by wines which are paler, crisper and made in a much firmer, reductive style.

The same is true for the white wines of Lugana, where the softening influence of residual sugar is much less evident than in the past, making for wines which are more food friendly and revealing a potential for evolution which makes Lugana one of Italy’s most interesting mature whites today.

Residual sugar is part of Prosecco’s DNA, but it is noticeable that in recent vintages, Extra Dry wines from the DOCGs of Valdobbiadene Conegliano Superiore and Asolo Superiore demonstrate much lower dosage than they had previously.

A trend towards dry styles has seen more production of Brut, Extra Brut and even Brut Nature, and is confirmed by the fast-growing number of bone-dry Sui Lieviti or Col Fondo – wines that have refermented in bottle.

The fashion for dryness, however, perhaps distracts from the real question of getting the right balance. A Cartizze with 17g/l of residual sugar can be as perfectly poised as an Extra Brut with a dosage of 2g/l. I pick out two examples of beautiful wines at the opposite ends of the sugar scale in my notes below.

The slimming down process is also apparent – in a slightly different way – in Valpolicella, where many young producers are moving away from the fleshy, full-bodied style of Superiore of the past by abandoning the use of partially dried fruit and returning to the vinification of fresh grapes.

This results in medium-bodied food friendly wines that bring out the floral-herbal side of the wonderfully versatile Corvina grape, and that have fresher fruit and more refined textures than we have seen before.

Altitude advantage

With a few exceptions (Lugana is one) the Veneto’s most interesting wines come from hill zones. Two from the south of the region that have not attracted a lot of attention in the past but are well worth checking out, are the Colli Berici in the province of Vicenza and the Colli Euganei in the neighbouring province of Padova.

Both have relatively small productions but growing environments and grape varieties which give them very specific personalities.

The Colli Berici DOC covers around 650ha of a high wooded plateau to the south of Vicenza, with dark ferrous, calcareous soils.

The climate is one of the warmest in the region, which favours the red varieties that account for over 70% of the production (and incidentally also the production of exquisite olive oils).

The Colli Berici is the only DOC in the region which includes a grape known to the national register as Tocai Rosso, but in fact is none other than that most Mediterranean of varieties, Grenache.

How it came to the province of Vicenza is something of a mystery, but one theory is that it arrived via contacts between the local bishopric and the Popes at Avignon in the period of the papal schism, which, if true, gives it a long history in the region.

The grape is used to make a wine called Tai Rosso or simply Tai (pronounced ‘tie’), which has the pale shade, the dark fruit and floral aromas, and the soft, round palate typical of the variety.

Made in stainless steel to drink young, it is a quaffer. Riserva styles aged in oak, on the other hand, are full-bodied, mouth-filling wines for traditional Italian Sunday lunches. I have included examples of both styles in the notes below.

Volcanic character

The Colli Euganei is an area of curiously shaped conical hills of volcanic origin that rise out of the plain of the Veneto to an elevation of around 400m.

The DOC zone lies in the heart of a 2,000ha nature reserve and the wooded countryside has a distinctly wild appearance that sets it apart from other, more densely planted areas of the region.

Merlot and Cabernet do well, but the eye-catching wines are the whites grown on the stony higher slopes, where the accentuated night and day temperature excursions favour fresh acidity and the development of complex aromatics.

Particular beneficiaries of the very specific terroir are two local biotypes of familiar varietes, Fior d’Arancio (Moscato Giallo) and Serprino (Glera).

Colli Euganei Fior d’Arancio has its own DOCG. It comes in various (probably too many) versions but the one to look for is the gorgeously aromatic passito, where the fresh acidity and the minerally finish set off the rich, tropical fruit sweetness.

Serprino can be spumante, frizzante or bottle-refermeted Col Fondo. This might suggest a resemblance to Prosecco, but the sparkling wine of the Colli Euganei has its own, quite distinctive character, with more delicate white blossom aromas, crisp acidity, and the tangy quality typical of volcanic soils.

Sweet delights

To conclude, despite the trend towards drier styles that I mentioned above, sweet passito wines remain one of the riches of the Veneto.

Every corner of the region produces them, from grapes like the Vespaiolo of Torcolato, the Garganega of Recioto di Soave and Gambellara, and the Fior d’Arancio Moscato of the Colli Euganei.

All are blessed with natural acidity to balance the accumulation of sugars in the long drying process. It is a niche of declining popularity, but how sad the region would be without those delicious half bottles!

I make no apologies for including three great sweet wines in my notes below.

Richard’s pick of Veneto’s viticultural riches:

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Michael Garner, Victoria Daskal and Jason Millar tasted 53 wines, with 19 Highly Recommended

Bardolino Rosso: Panel tasting scores

53 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 0

Highly recommended 19

Recommended 29

Commended 5

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest-release red wines from the Bardolino DOC and sub-zones La Rocca, Montebaldo or Sommacampagna, and Bardolino Superiore DOCG

Scroll down for the best-scoring wines in the Bardolino Rosso panel tasting

In the shadow of Valpolicella

The name is fashionable enough – the village is a popular tourist destination on the shores of Lake Garda in Italy’s central north – but the wines of Bardolino continue to live in nearby Valpolicella’s shadow.

These pale, unassuming reds are easy to overlook and offer a very different proposition from their neighbour, where wines based on the same grape varieties often derive from the appassimento process (in which grapes are dried prior to fermentation).

As such, Bardolino Rosso remains true to type and gives tasters an authentic expression of the lively red fruit characters and telltale twist of black pepper that define the Corvina grape.

As Victoria Daskal observed: ‘Bardolino flies under the radar, but it shouldn’t; bursting with sour cherry, pomegranate and floral notes, with its soft tannins and bright acidity, it’s a natural fit for hip wine bars.’

Jason Millar pointed out that, ‘[Bardolino] Classico did seem to perform better than basic Rosso; purity of style and often rather good value for money make the Classico zone the best place for wine lovers to start exploring Bardolino.’

Click here to see more results from the panel tasting

Zone in on the crus

The judges all agreed that many of the finest examples originated from the three ‘cru’ areas of Montebaldo, Sommacampagna and La Rocca. These various versions are united by their joyful freshness, easy drinkability and foodfriendly nature.

Think straightforward, fresh, zingy cherry- and almond-scented reds for the most part, and leaner, more fragrant and challenging examples, often with brief oak ageing, higher up the quality ladder.

These more aspirational – but still affordable – wines show greater elegance and ageing potential, while the simpler style is best drunk young.

All promise style over substance and remain reassuringly understated.

Thanks to their versatility, these Bardolino reds excel with lighter foods and it’s strongly recommended to enjoy them lightly chilled – a tip not only from the judging panel but also from many of the wineries themselves.

What to drink with Bardolino Rosso, by Fiona Beckett

It can help to think of Bardolino less as a red wine than as a dark rosé. Of course there are fuller-bodied examples, but most you come across will be best drunk lightly chilled. It’s basically a red that appeals to white wine drinkers.

That makes it a good match for antipasti, particularly salumi. It goes nicely with mortadella and Parma or San Daniele ham with gnocchi fritti (deep fried dough balls), which makes it a good wine for an aperitivo or a snack.

It’s also great with olives, fresh goat’s cheese and other young cheeses, and is a good pairing with polpettine (little meatballs) and pasta with sausage or pork cooked in milk. Think ‘white’ Italian dishes rather than tomato-based ones.

Being light, it’s also a perfect wine for an al fresco summer supper or a barbecue: a light salad of raw courgettes, tomatoes and basil for instance, followed by grilled lamb chops with herbs and fried potatoes.

Like other light reds, Bardolino pairs well with grilled or roast fish such as seared tuna, salmon or roast seabass, too.

Bardolino Rosso panel tasting results

Wines were tasted blind

The judges

Michael Garner is co-owner of Italian specialist Tria Wines and DWWA Regional Chair for Northern Italy. He is the author of Amarone and the Fine Wines of Verona (£35 Académie du Vin Library, 2017)

Victoria Daskal is a wine writer, presenter, consultant and WSET educator. In 2008, she completed the OIV MSc in International Wine Management, and among others has since worked for Jancis Robinson’s Purple Pages and as managing editor of The World of Fine Wine

Jason Millar is a freelance wine writer, consultant, judge and communicator, with a focus on Italy and South Africa. He has a background in buying, importing and sales, and in 2016 was the top WSET Diploma graduate worldwide

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Nestled in the dramatic landscapes of northeastern Italy, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol is a region where winemaking is as deeply rooted as the towering Dolomites themselves. This region is known for its pristine mountain air, varied terroirs, a blend of Italian and Germanic influences, and elegance and precision in its wines.

It’s uniquely split into two distinct identities: Trentino, with its Italian heritage and renown for sparkling Trento DOC; and Alto Adige/Südtirol, where Germanic traditions shine through in vibrant whites and expressive reds.

While its reputation has often been linked to fresh, mineral-driven whites and structured reds, the region is stepping into the limelight with a stunning selection of wines that showcase its boundless potential.

Scroll down to discover DWWA 2024 awarded wines

The Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) 2024 competition results last year highlighted this region’s consistent excellence, with an impressive Best in Show, six Platinum, 15 Gold and 101 Silver medals in all – a selection of which we show here.

These accolades highlight not only the diversity of varieties thriving in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, but also the region’s winemaking of finesse and character.

Michael Garner, DWWA Regional Chair for Northern Italy noted: ‘The excellence of the region’s white wines is well established, but the resurgence of its reds should come as no surprise: they dominated production prior to the 1980s.’

At the pinnacle of this excellence in 2024 was Cantina Andrian’s sweet passito Gewürztraminer (see below), awarded Best in Show. A nod to the grape’s origins in Alto Adige, this is a wine of exquisite purity.

Discover more DWWA medal-winning favourites from all over the world at awards.decanter.com

Best in Show

Cantina Andrian, Juvelo Gewürztraminer Passito 2022

Best in Show, 97 points

POA £ Astrum Wine Cellars, Sociovino

We tend to associate Gewürztraminer with Alsace, but its name actually signifies ‘the spicy one from Tramin’. More fruity (fresh peach, nectarine, apricot) than many of its French vendange tardive or sélection de grains nobles peers, this is relatively low in acidity but lusciously rich in sugars – a fruit-tart-in-a-glass, dusted with the finest sugar spice you could imagine. The texture overall is lighter than many sweet Alsace examples, which tend to have richer tannin profiles. It’s the prettiest of dessert wines, and perfect for afternoon tea. Alcohol 11%

Whites

Pinot Bianco

Nals Margreid, Sirmian 2022

Platinum, 97 points

£36.50 NY Wines

Enthralling grapefruit, fresh cut grass and floral aromas abound with a twist of pepper freshness clinging rapturously to the lively acidity. Plump and viscous with a lavish lemony fluidity that trickles towards the end. Superb. Alc 14.5%

Cantina Terlano, Rarity 2011

Gold, 95 points

£225.50 Falcon Vintners, Harrogate Wines, Hedonism, Sociovino

Exuding impeccable maturity and laden with plump nectarine, peach, melon and yellow blossom. Toasty generosity and enlivening mineral undertones. Ample, rich and very long. Alc 14%

Sauvignon Blanc 

Kornell, Oberberg 2021

Silver, 94 points

kornell.it

Aromatic nose of cut grass, gooseberry and lychee, followed by a palate of mandarin, grapefruit and mango. Alc 13.5%

Sylvaner 

Abbazia di Novacella, Praepositus, Isarco 2022

Gold, 95 points

kloster-neustift.it

Remarkably expressive floral aromas and notes of green tea, grapefruit and pear infuse nicely into the plush texture and stony, mineral acidity. Long and memorable. Alc 14%

White blends

Cantina Terlano, Terlaner Primo Grande Cuvée 2021

Platinum, 97 points

£254 Berry Bros & Rudd, Field & Fawcett, Harrogate Wines, Sociovino

Mango, pineapple and melon, with grassy, floral undertones. Poised and elegant, with impressive mineral structure and citrus acidity. Rich, refreshing and amazingly long. Alc 14%

Kurtatsch, Amos 2022

Gold, 96 points

kellerei-kurtatsch.it

White stone fruit, ripe melon and mango fruits with a surge of grassy herbals. Incredibly juicy, with a touch of minty grip on the finish. Alc 14%

Cantina Tramin, Stoan 2022

Gold, 95 points

£26.99-£34.95 All About Wine, Harrogate Wines, Hic, Valvona & Crolla, Vinvm, Wadebridge Wines, Wine Poole, Winesquare

Very buzzy and bright, with myriad grassy herbals, apples and lemons. Brilliantly fresh and alluring with a chalky mineral core and bracing acidity. Distinctive and joyous. Alc 14.5%

St Michael-Eppan, Appius 2019

Gold, 95 points

£135-£161.61 Dexter & Jones, Eurowines

A panorama of flavour: melon, orchard fruit and ripe citrus enhance by a lick of mint and dried herbs. Scrumptiously creamy, unctuous and complex. Alc 14%

Weingut Niklas, DJJ Weiss Riserva 2021

Silver, 94 points

niklaserhof.it

Opulent, tropical nose of pineapple, mango and toast, followed by sleek oak, spice and a lovely minerality on the palate. Alc 14.5%

Reds

Pinot Noir 

Englar, Baltasius Riserva 2020

Gold, 96 points

englar.it

Awash with red berries and attractive florals that perch decadently upon a nutty, vanilla oak structure, with a crunch of chalky tannin and a spicy finish. Alc 13.5%

Peter Zemmer, Vigna Kofl Riserva 2021

Gold, 96 points

£38 Wine-Boutique

Copious amounts of raspberry, strawberry and plum fruit alongside fragrant anise and liquorice spice. Remarkably plush with velvety tannins and a charming, fruit-laden acidity. Alc 13.5%

Alois Lageder, Krafuss, Vigneti delle Dolomiti 2022

Silver

£48.15-£51 Bibendum Wine, The Fine Wine Co, Vinvm

Inviting and aromatic, with fragrance of vibrant red fruit, violet and spice, then a palate of cranberry, wild strawberry and sweet spice. Alc 12.5%

Teroldego

Cavit, Terrazze della Luna, Teroldego Rotaliano 2022

Value Gold, 95 points

£9-£9.99 All About Wine, Dunstable Wines, Kwoff, ND John

Classic style exuding scrumptious red berries, plums and inky spice with a cleansing sour-cherry note. Crunchy fresh with smooth tannins and a mouthwatering finish. Alc 12.5%

Search all DWWA 2024 award-winning wines

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