White Grape · Lombardy

Erbamat

Erbamat is Franciacorta's insurance against a warming world: a nearly-extinct, razor-acid Brescia white that ripens weeks after everything else, written back into the rules in 2017 to keep its sparkling wine tense as Chardonnay grows ever riper and rounder.

Erbamat is an ancient white grape from the Brescia hills of Lombardy. It was almost lost in the twentieth century. It is now back in the Franciacorta DOCG as a fourth permitted grape. Its very late ripening and bracing malic acidity give Franciacorta producers a native counterweight to Chardonnay and Pinot Nero.

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Denominations

Setting it straight

More than meets the eye

vs
The reality

A heritage grape as climate insurance

  • Since the 2017 harvest, up to 10% Erbamat has been allowed in the Franciacorta blend beside Chardonnay and Pinot Nero, the first grape added to the appellation in decades.
  • It ripens 20 to 30 days after Chardonnay, holding on to green malic acid and refusing to build sugar, exactly the tension a hotter Franciacorta keeps losing.
  • This is no import wheeled in to modernise the wine: it is a true native, documented in the Brescia hills in 1564 and grown almost nowhere else on earth.
The myth

Fighting the heat with something riper

  • The instinct against warming is to reach for heat-loving grapes; Franciacorta did the opposite and revived a vine prized for barely ripening at all.
  • A new name in a famous sparkling blend sounds like innovation, but Erbamat is the oldest idea in the room, one the agronomist Agostino Gallo already knew in the 1560s.

The anchor fact: Faced with a climate that ripens grapes earlier and sweeter every decade, Franciacorta's answer was to look backwards: in 2017 it wrote a nearly-extinct local white, Erbamat, back into its rulebook, precisely because it ripens weeks late and hoards acidity.

Taste · Where it sits

What it’s actually like in the glass

Forget scores out of five. Here’s Erbamat described against grapes you already know.

BodyWhip-thin
LeanFull

One of the leanest whites in Italy, barely reaching 11.5% because Erbamat struggles to build sugar at all. That near-weightless, low-alcohol frame is the whole point, not a flaw: it is the acid skeleton a warming Franciacorta reaches for, never the flesh.

TanninNone
NoneGrippy

Pressed off pale skins, so there is no tannin to speak of; whatever grip you feel is pure acid rather than phenolic bite. In a grape grown to sharpen a sparkling blend, that clean, skinless cut is exactly what is wanted.

AcidityFerocious
SoftRacing

The whole reason Erbamat exists on a modern label. Picked 20 to 30 days after everything else, it clings to green, mouth-watering malic acid that tasters call biting, the razor edge Franciacorta blends in to stay tense as the climate turns its Chardonnay soft.

Fruit & sweetnessBone-dry, neutral
Bone-drySweet

Made bone-dry and deliberately quiet: green apple, lemon and a chalky, stony coolness rather than perfume or ripe orchard sweetness. Where Chardonnay brings richness to Franciacorta, Erbamat brings austerity, all line and no flesh.

Key flavours

Wet stones
Cool, chalky wet-stone minerality drawn from the glacial moraine of the Franciacorta amphitheatre, the stony backbone that makes Erbamat read as mineral far more than fruity.
Green Apple
The taste of a grape picked weeks after its neighbours yet still refusing to ripen: hard, crunchy green apple with the skin still on, all snap and no sugar, the fruit of relentless malic acid.
Lemon
A sharp squeeze of lemon and lemon pith, the citrus edge of a wine built on acid and barely 11.5% alcohol, cleansing rather than juicy or ripe.
Acacia
A thread of acacia and delicate white blossom on the nose, soft and honeyed, the gentle side that led the 1560s agronomist Agostino Gallo to call Erbamat the source of the sweetest, gentlest of white wines.
Apple blossom
A faint white apple-blossom lift, the closest this grape comes to perfume. Erbamat is near-neutral by nature, which is exactly why it slips into a Franciacorta blend without stamping its own aroma over the Chardonnay.
Nettles
A green, faintly stinging note of fresh nettle and cut stalk, the herbal, savoury streak that keeps this neutral Brescia white tasting wild rather than simply blank.
Racy · Crisp Round · Soft Light-bodied Bold · Full Chardonnay Glera Pinot Grigio Sauvignon Blanc Vermentino Pinot Bianco
Erbamat

The map

Erbamat is light-bodied, racy, high acidity, mapped against other white grapes you can buy. The closer a grape sits, the more its weight and freshness resemble Erbamat.

Erbamatlight-bodied, racy, high acidity
Chardonnaymuch fuller, far rounder
Glerafuller, rounder
Pinot Grigiofuller, rounder
Sauvignon Blancfuller
Vermentinofuller, rounder
Pinot Biancofuller, far rounder

Is this for you?

An honest gut-check

Reach for it when…

A bold red that just works

  • You are deep into Franciacorta and want to taste its newest, rarest thread: the climate-era blending grape, or one of the very few still, varietal Erbamat bottlings a handful of producers now make.
  • You love brutal, mouth-watering acidity and low alcohol: a lean, chalky, green-apple white built entirely on tension rather than richness or perfume.
  • You are curious how wine answers a warming climate and want to drink the actual response, a nearly-extinct grape revived to keep sparkling wine sharp.

Maybe skip it if…

You’re after something else tonight

  • You want aroma and generosity: Erbamat is deliberately neutral and austere, the acid spine of a blend, not a perfumed star like Gewurztraminer or a rich, ripe Chardonnay.
  • You want a famous name or an easy buy: this is one of Italy's rarest grapes, usually a quiet 10% of a Franciacorta and very hard to find on its own.
  • You find searing, low-alcohol whites severe: Erbamat's razor acid is thrilling in a blend but can feel unforgiving poured alone.

Serving guide

Pour it at its best

Serve at

6-8°C

Serve it cold, 6 to 8C: the chill frames its razor acid and chalky cut, the two things Erbamat is grown for, and stops so lean a wine from feeling thin.

Decant

Not needed

No decanting. There is no tannin or oak to soften and nothing to unwind, and air only dulls the mineral, high-acid edge that is the entire point.

Glass

Flute Glass

Reach for a flute. You will almost always meet Erbamat inside a Franciacorta, and the tall glass keeps that traditional-method mousse and its nervy acidity taut; a plain white glass suits the rare still bottling.

Drink within

1-2 days

Drink it young, inside a year or two, while the green-apple bite and lemon are at their sharpest; freshness, not age, is what this grape offers on its own.

Cellar

3-8 years

Do not lay the still wine down. Yet the same searing acidity is exactly what lets the Franciacorta it joins spend years on the lees without tiring, which is why the region wanted it back.

Buy it · three to start with

Not sure which bottle? Start here

A curated trio across the price range, then every Erbamat on sale in the UK right now.

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Denominations

Where it earns a name on the label

The appellations where Erbamat plays a starring role.

FranciacortaDOCG

Where it grows

Where Erbamat grows in Lombardy

Lombardy wine region

Lombardy

From Franciacorta classic-method bubbles to Valtellina mountain Nebbiolo and Lugana lake-cool whites, Lombardy spans 5 DOCGs across roughly 25,000 hectares of vineyards.

458 wines · 44 denominations
Explore the Lombardy guide

The terroir

Erbamat is a grape of one small corner of the world. It survives almost entirely in the Brescia hills of Lombardy, and above all in Franciacorta, the sparkling appellation whose response to climate change gave the vine its second life. Grow it anywhere warmer and its late ripening and hoarded acid, the whole reason it matters, would simply melt away.

Franciacorta

The glacial-moraine amphitheatre of hills south of Lake Iseo, in Lombardy.

Erbamat's modern stage: since 2017 a permitted blending grape, up to a tenth of Italy's benchmark traditional-method sparkling, planted by growers who want its late-ripening acidity as insurance against warming vintages.

The Brescia hills

The wider province of Brescia in eastern Lombardy, the vine's ancestral home.

Where Erbamat was documented in 1564 and where it nearly died out over the centuries that followed. It is grown almost nowhere else, so its entire story stays bound to this one stretch of Lombardy.

Editorial

About Erbamat

The written history of Erbamat reaches back to 1564. In that year the Brescian agronomist Agostino Gallo listed it among the local vines. He called it 'albamate'. The name itself ties the Latin albus, white, to a Lombard root for late. That points to the trait that defines the grape: it finishes ripening twenty to thirty days after Chardonnay. For centuries it grew across the morainic hillsides between Brescia, Ome, Gussago and Rodengo Saiano. It then almost vanished in the twentieth century, as international grapes and mechanisation pushed it aside.

The logic reads backwards at first. As the climate warms and grapes ripen earlier and sweeter each decade, Franciacorta went hunting for a vine that refuses to cooperate. Erbamat ripens up to a month after Chardonnay and clings to its acid, so in 2017 the region rewrote its own rulebook to let a grape it had almost abandoned back into the bottle, up to one part in ten, as a hedge against a warming world.

Erbamat readmitted to the Franciacorta DOCG, 2017 harvest

The comeback began in the early 2000s, under the Consorzio Franciacorta and Professor Leonardo Valenti of the University of Milan. Tracking the vine through its growth cycle confirmed its worth to a region facing earlier and warmer harvests. On 4 January 2017 Italy's Ministry of Agriculture cleared Erbamat for the Franciacorta DOCG rulebook. It is capped at ten per cent of the cuvee. The other grapes in the cuvee are Chardonnay, Pinot Nero and Pinot Bianco.

In the vineyard Erbamat shows medium-high vigour, compact bunches, thin yellow-green skins and small berries. It is almost always made in stainless steel at low temperatures. The wines are pale straw in colour, with notes of citrus, green apple, white flowers and chalk. The palate is notably lean and vertical, driven by malic acidity and low alcohol. Wood is usually avoided, because it would mask this naturally restrained aroma.

Roughly twenty-five hectares are now planted, about 62 acres. Nearly all of that sits within the province of Brescia. The leader is Barone Pizzini, with around four thousand vines. Others who have committed plantings to this trial return are Castello Bonomi, Ca' del Bosco, Guido Berlucchi, Ferghettina, Giuseppe Vezzoli and Ronco Calino.

Good to know

Frequently asked

Erbamat is an ancient white grape native to the Brescia hills of Lombardy. It was recovered from near-extinction. It has been allowed in the Franciacorta DOCG cuvee since 2017. It is prized for three things: very late ripening, high malic acidity and a lean, chalky profile.

Almost all Erbamat plantings sit within the province of Brescia in Lombardy. They are on morainic hillside soils. The vineyards are spread across Franciacorta villages such as Rodengo Saiano, Ome, Gussago, Monticelli Brusati and Adro. The total surface area is around twenty-five hectares. That works out at about 62 acres.

Erbamat is pale straw in the glass, with green reflections. The nose offers citrus, green apple, white flowers and chalk. The palate is very dry. It is lean and vertical, with vivid malic acidity, low alcohol and a clean, almost alpine finish.

The Consorzio Franciacorta championed Erbamat as an ally against climate change. Its late ripening and high malic acidity keep cuvees fresh when Chardonnay and Pinot Nero risk over-ripening. That keeps Franciacorta's house style in balance in warm vintages.

Yes, but very rarely. Within Franciacorta DOCG it may be used for up to ten per cent of the blend. The other grapes are Chardonnay, Pinot Nero and Pinot Bianco. A handful of producers also bottle small experimental still wines. Castello Bonomi has led that since 2011.

Barone Pizzini is the leading grower, with around four thousand vines. Other Franciacorta houses that have planted the grape include Castello Bonomi, Ca' del Bosco, Guido Berlucchi, Ferghettina, Giuseppe Vezzoli and Ronco Calino.

Explore by style

Wine styles made from Erbamat

Jump to the editorial guide for each style this grape turns up in.

Keep exploring

More white grapes