Botter, Lapilli, Greco di Tufo, Campania 2021 (13%)

POA £ Astrum Wine Cellars $24.99 Cost Plus Liquors

Greco is, with Fiano, one of the two great white varieties of southern Italy – and it may be even older than Fiano, though the case lies beyond proof. What’s certain is that it can make refined, fresh, balanced whites that belie their latitude. Take a sniff of this wine and you might imagine you were up in the mountains, or close to some great ocean: it’s fresh, sappy, ripely green, almost evoking Pessac-Léognan or the Pinot Bianco wines of Alto Adige. On the palate, it’s true; you feel the southern width, depth, sinew and plump fruits, yet the poise and freshness sketched out on the nose never leaves the wine. Might Italy’s greatest wines in fact come from the country’s south? Taste this, and wonder.

Established almost 100 years ago by Carlo and Maria Botter – and still a family-run affair – Botter cares for vineyards which trace the spine of Italy, stretching from Veneto in the north down to the island of Sicily. Taking its name from semi-molten pebbles (lapilli) ejected during an eruption, Botter’s Best in Show very much pays homage to the land of its birth, Campania, a geologically tempestuous region shaped by volcanic activity.

Lapilli’s vineyards sit on calcareous and clay soil in the southwest of Campania’s Avellino province. ‘The climate is quintessentially Mediterranean,’ the producer says. ‘Very high temperatures in the summer are made more bearable by the mitigating effect of the sea and the topography of the region.’

A whistle-clean, startling expression of the indigenous Greco di Tufo variety, the grapes for this wine were softly pressed then fermented and stored in stainless steel, where the wine rested on its lees for several weeks to imbue body and texture.