Lambrusco, Emilia-Romagna’s sparkling red wine, is on-trend for being pairable, chillable, and more complex than once presumed.
But besides Lambrusco (and Sangiovese), there's another grape worth considering – the region's signature white grape, Albana.
Albana has long been overlooked due to its primary application in sweet, late-harvest passito wines, which has obscured the grape’s true potential.
Yet did you know that Albana di Romagna DOCG was the first white wine in Italy to receive DOCG designation, in 1987?
Capable of making dry and sparkling styles as well as the more ubiquitous sweets, the golden hued grape's versatility hinges on attention to terroir and technique.
So here are three reasons to pick up a bottle of Albana this summer.
1. Authenticity
Many winemakers in the region are commited to Romagna’s indigenous varieties, including Trebbiano, Sangiovese, and of course Albana.
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This ensures that a sense of true identity and authenticity can be found in the bottle, tied to microclimate and soils for true terroir expression.
Open valleys support some maritime influence from the Adriatic Sea and abundant sun exposure, while inland sites offer a greater balance of clay in the soil for water retention.
Albana thrives in a composite of calcareous, sandstone, and clay soils, where it expresses acidity, salinity, and minerality.
For example, Elisa Valpiani – co-owner of Marta Valpiani in Castrocaro Terme – applies low-intervention winemaking in ‘Delyus’, a bright white with a lovely salty freshness, grown on south-facing slopes 500 metres above sea level.
2. Versatility
Full in body and with a plush texture, Albana's dry wines typically express savouriness and freshness, with tension and equilibrium between citrus, stone fruit, herbal and floral notes.
Notes of honey complement sweeter wines.
Albana’s thick skins lend phenolic structure, which makes it particularly suited to orange/ skin contact expressions, as well as supporting sweet wines.
The grape's natural acidity is beneficial for making sparkling wines, and also perfectly counterpoints the residual sugar in botrytis and late-harvest sweet styles.
Vinification in concrete or stainless steel preserves Albana's dynamism, while the use of oak brings out more complexity and enhances texure.
Lees stirring is used for even more weight and texture.
3. Food friendly
With phenolic structure, acidity and freshness, Albana is a fantastic white wine for the dinner table.
Dry versions in particular are substantive, full-bodied counterparts to the region’s signature pasta dish, cappelletti, as well as structured seafood, pork, and poultry dishes.
(Image credit: Poggio della Dogana)
Albana's roots
The Enoteca Regionale Emilia-Romagna traces Albana’s first documentation to the late 15th century, though it's postulated it may date to the first centuries of the common era.
According to legend, Roman soldiers compared the grape’s colour to the blonde hair of emperor Theodosius' daughter, Galla Placidia.
'Albus' also signifies ‘white’ in Latin, its etymology potentially an allusion to the Colli Albani, or Alban Hills – white-hued volcanic uplifts in Lazio.
In another legend involving Galla Placida, she is said to have tasted Albana while travelling through the region and declared it so good that it should be: 'non di così rozzo calice sei degno, o vino, ma di berti in oro' ('not drunk from a rude cup but drunk from a golden goblet') giving rise to the town known today as Bertinoro – still renowned for its Albana.
Today, Albana is cultivated primarily in Faenza, Forlì-Cesena, Ravenna, Bologna, and Rimini.
