La Dolce Vita
A crash course in Italian whites—wines for people who drink pour- overs rather than frappuccinos
Italian white wines are often dismissed as unserious—and relegated to drinking only during carefree summer months. But this hasn’t always been the case. This reputation largely stems from post-war technological innovations and industrialised farming, which made a diverse category increasingly homogenous. Along the way, “don’t they all taste like pinot grigio?” became a reasonable question.
Today, though, the answer to that question is a firm no. I should admit my own bias, as a faculty member of the Vinitaly International Academy, an educational body designed to spread the gospel of Italian native grapes, but I fervently believe that there are some dynamite whites being produced in Italy.
Unlike riesling or sauvignon blanc, most Italian white grapes are not explicitly fruity. It’s their varied nonfruit aromas—such as fennel and anise (in the case of verdicchio), hazelnuts (fiano), mint and sage (pecorino) or just an ineffable saline (vermentino), illicitly petrochemical (garganega) or mineral (carricante)—as well as their infinitely varied textures and often a refreshing hint of bitterness that make them sophisticated and unique.
In ancient Rome, it was frequently the white wines that were especially valued for finesse and longevity. Admittedly the Romans also mixed their wine with water, spices and, occasionally, lead, so their judgment may not always have been trustworthy.
That storied longevity, though, may hold the key to what many of us are missing. Though mass-market summer sippers are undeniably single-season wines, even great Italian whites are often drunk well before they’ve even begun to uncoil, their aromas literally locked away in socalled aromatic precursors. These grapes’ almost universal high acidity and phenolics (the white grape equivalent of tannins) give structure and a tactile mouthfeel that seem austere in youth but allow the wines to evolve complex,
almost indescribable aromas as the compounds interact over time.
The reasons I keep harping on about grapes rather than regions are manifold. One is the Byzantine complexity of the DOC and DOCG classification system, which sometimes elevates wines of no particular distinction and disregards brilliant ones. Another is that Italy’s almost comically variable topography and geology make regional generalisations almost futile (see Sicilian whites with the delicacy of German riesling and Alpine whites oozing voluptuousness). Finally, the relative simplicity of much Italian white winemaking, with minimal new oak, gives the grapes the opportunity to shine.
Meanwhile, one trendy category that has renewed interest in Italian whites involves wines that strictly speaking are barely white at all—orange wines. Josko Gravner, from the Slavicinfluenced region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, can be credited with sparking Italy’s fascination with the ancient Georgian practice of fermenting white grapes with their skins in amphorae for months to create deeply coloured, sensuously textural wines that bear as much resemblance to a spritzy Frascati as Bottega Veneta does to Love by Moschino.
However, it is the less overtly process-driven whites that probably have the most staying power. Grapes such as verdicchio, garganega, and fiano (the big three), treated to enough skin contact to extract their subtle but distinctive characters, can produce wines of great interest and, sometimes, profundity.
Excitingly, where even five years ago Asia was virtually devoid of Italian native grape wines, especially whites, the efforts of regional promotional bodies, pioneering importers and independent event organisers such as JC Viens, whose Italian Wine Celebration and Vino Condiviso events have become Hong Kong institutions, have brought them to the fore.