![]() ![]() ![]() I’ve said nothing of ribolla gialla from Friuli-Venezia Giulia or vitovska from the Carso area fiano or falanghina from Campania, or prié blanc from the Valle d’Aosta vespaiola from Vicenza or nosiola from Trentino. Banyuls wines are also very sweet, just like the Port wines, but contain slightly less alcohol content. These wines are typically made of Grenache grapes, and also Grenache blanc grapes, if you’re looking for a white wine version of Banyuls. Make it all pinot grigio and Prosecco, and they’d be very happy.īut the diversity of Italian wine is its glory. Banyuls wines hail from France and, like the Port wines, are typically known as a dessert wine. They would prefer Italian wine to be simplified. It’s enough to make Italian marketers plotz, as we say in New York. Insolia, also spelled inzolia, is known in other parts of Italy as Ansonica.Ĭonfusing? You bet. Zibibbo is the same grape elsewhere in the world known as muscat of Alexandria. Trebbiano Abruzzese is different, and superior, to the myriad trebbianos grown elsewhere in Italy. Grecanico in Sicily is the same as garganega in Veneto, the primary grape of Soave. Not surprisingly in a country where rigid organization is rarely evident, many of these grapes have multiple names depending on the region they are grown. My choices included a trebbiano Abruzzese and a pecorino, both from Abruzzo three from Sicily, a carricante from Etna, a grillo from western Sicily and a blend of insolia and grecanico from the Vittoria region a zibibbo from Calabria and a verdicchio from the Marche a grechetto from Umbria, a cortese from the Piedmont and a kerner from Alto Adige. ![]() I easily could have picked another 10 great bottles without duplication if I were making my usual rounds through the city. Yet, I look at the 10 wines I chose, and then consider all the Italian whites that I did not include. Can you think of 10 American white wines without duplicating grapes? Really good ones, all under $25? I didn’t think so. Each wine is made from a different grape or blend, which maybe is not so easy to imagine. Shopping online from my pandemic isolation in Manhattan, I picked out 10 excellent bottles priced at $25 or less. As the weather warms up and diets adjust to the season, these wines will make for wonderful summer drinking. Many of these wines are reasonably priced and great values. But just as the best-selling big-brand American wines do not suggest the potential for quality in the United States wine industry, these genres reveal little of how far Italian white wine has come in the last 30 years.įrom Sicily, south of the Italian mainland, to Alto Adige and Friuli-Venezia Giulia in the northeast and the Valle d’Aosta in the northwest, Italy is overflowing with fascinating, distinctive white wines. Both are largely generic, bland wines that are nonetheless highly popular. True, much of that production is pinot grigio and Prosecco. ![]()
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