White Grape · Lazio

Malvasia Puntinata

Malvasia Puntinata, properly Malvasia del Lazio, is the fine, aromatic Malvasia of the Roman hills: the low-yielding quality clone that lends apricot, honey and white blossom to the best Frascati and Castelli Romani whites.

Malvasia Puntinata is the aromatic white grape behind Frascati DOC, Cannellino di Frascati DOCG and Roma DOC. It is anchored on the volcanic slopes of the Castelli Romani south of Rome. The catalogue also lists it as Malvasia del Lazio. This semi-aromatic variety is named for the dark spots that dot its golden-green skin at harvest.

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Clearing it up

One name, two different wines

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This is the grape

Malvasia del Lazio (Puntinata)

The noble clone of the Castelli Romani

  • A Muscat in disguiseA natural cross of Moscato di Alessandria and Schiava Grossa, which is where its apricot, honey and gentle grapey perfume come from: aromatic where most Malvasia is neutral.
  • Perfume and structureThe quality grape prized for lifting Frascati Superiore above the everyday carafe, giving real body, floral scent and a mineral core rather than just cold refreshment.
  • Shy and low-yieldingIt crops little and unreliably, which is exactly why growers once abandoned it for the more generous Candia, and why good varietal bottlings stay scarce and worth seeking.
Not this

Malvasia di Candia

The high-yield workhorse of the same hills

  • Planted for volumeA vigorous, generous cropper that fills the everyday Frascati and Castelli Romani carafe, the productive grape that displaced the finer Puntinata across the last century.
  • Lighter and plainerIn the Roman hills it gives a more neutral, simply citrus and green-apple wine, without the apricot, honey and floral lift that mark out Malvasia del Lazio.

The anchor fact: Two different white grapes share the Frascati bottle and the Malvasia name. Malvasia Puntinata is really Malvasia del Lazio, the region's finest and most aromatic Malvasia clone, while the Malvasia di Candia beside it is the higher-cropping, plainer workhorse that for most of the twentieth century crowded the finer grape out of the blend.

Taste · Where it sits

What it’s actually like in the glass

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

BodyRounded, medium
LightFull

Real mid-weight for a white: Puntinata carries more flesh and creaminess than the lean Trebbiano and Candia it is blended with, and that body and structure are a large part of why it is the grape worth seeking in a Frascati.

TanninNone to speak of
NoneGrippy

No real tannin, as you would expect of a white; what little savoury grip there is comes from a faint bitter-almond bite on the finish rather than from anything on the skins.

AcidityMedium, fresh
SoftRacy

Middling, gently fresh acidity rather than a racy snap: enough lemony cut to keep the apricot and honey in balance, but this is an aromatic, rounded wine built on perfume and flesh, not on sharpness.

Fruit & sweetnessDry but perfumed
Bone drySweet

Made dry, yet it drinks fruitier than its sugar: the apricot, honey and white-blossom scent reads almost sweet on the nose before a clean, dry finish. Its one genuinely sweet turn is the honeyed, late-harvest Cannellino di Frascati.

Key flavours

Acacia
Acacia and orange-blossom perfume, the floral signature that separates a real Malvasia del Lazio from the plainer everyday Frascati: a honeyed white-flower lift sitting over the orchard fruit.
Peach
White and yellow peach flesh alongside the apricot, the soft orchard fruit of a ripe Puntinata grown on the warm volcanic slopes of the Colli Albani.
Apricot
Ripe apricot is Puntinata's calling card, the stone-fruit note that fills out a good Frascati Superiore and sets the fine clone apart from the lean, citrus-only Candia beside it in the blend.
Lemon
A clean lemon-and-lime freshness cutting in under the apricot and honey, the acidity that stops an aromatic, fuller-bodied white like this from ever feeling heavy in the glass.
Pear
A cool, ripe-pear note rounding out the stone fruit, the gentler orchard side of the grape that shows most in the fresher, unoaked Castelli Romani bottlings.
Honey
A mellow honeyed richness on the nose over a dry palate, the rounder, waxier weight that Malvasia del Lazio brings to a Castelli Romani white and that the crisp Trebbiano and Candia cannot.
Almond
A blanched, faintly bitter-almond twist on the close, the savoury sign-off that keeps Puntinata's apricot and honey from turning sweet and roots it firmly among the whites of the Roman hills.
Wet stones
A wet-tufo, volcanic-stone minerality drawn straight from the pozzolana and weathered basalt of the Roman hills, the savoury mineral grip that sits under Puntinata's perfume.
Racy · Crisp Round · Soft Light-bodied Bold · Full Chardonnay Glera Pinot Grigio Sauvignon Blanc Vermentino Pinot Bianco
Malvasia Puntinata

The map

Malvasia Puntinata is medium-bodied, balanced acidity, mapped against other white grapes you can buy. The closer a grape sits, the more its weight and freshness resemble Malvasia Puntinata.

Malvasia Puntinatamedium-bodied, balanced acidity
Chardonnaya close match
Gleralighter, crisper
Pinot Grigiolighter, crisper
Sauvignon Blanclighter, far crisper
Vermentinolighter, crisper
Pinot Biancolighter

Is this for you?

An honest gut-check

Reach for it when…

A bold red that just works

  • You want to taste what a good Frascati can really be: seek out a bottle built on Malvasia del Lazio, the fine aromatic clone, and you get apricot, honey and white blossom instead of just something cold and wet.
  • You like a dry white that still smells generous and floral: Puntinata gives the perfume of an aromatic grape while finishing clean and dry, lovely as a Roman aperitivo or beside porchetta and fried Castelli Romani antipasti.
  • You are working through the Malvasia family or the grapes of Lazio: this is the noblest of the many Malvasias, the quality clone of the Castelli Romani, and a far more interesting glass than the workhorse Candia it shares the region with.

Maybe skip it if…

You’re after something else tonight

  • You want a crisp, neutral, thirst-quenching white with no scent to it: Puntinata is aromatic and rounded, closer to a dry, gently grapey Muscat cousin than to a lean Pinot Grigio or a plain Trebbiano.
  • You want a wine to cellar: it is at its aromatic best in its first year or two, and its perfume is the first thing to fade, so drink it young and fresh rather than from the back of the rack.
  • You are buying the cheapest Frascati on the shelf: the bargain end leans on high-yielding Candia and Trebbiano for volume, so to actually taste Puntinata you need a varietal Malvasia del Lazio or a serious Frascati Superiore.

Serving guide

Pour it at its best

Serve at

10-12°C

Serve it cool but not frozen, around 10 to 12C: chill an aromatic Puntinata too hard and you shut down the apricot, honey and blossom that are the whole reason to choose it over a plain Frascati.

Decant

No

No need to decant. This is a fresh, perfumed young white with nothing folded up to unwind, and a spell in a decanter would only tire its delicate aromatics.

Glass

Tulip Glass

A tulip glass, its bowl tapering in at the rim, gathers and concentrates the floral, stone-fruit perfume that is Puntinata's whole calling card.

Drink within

2-3 days

An opened bottle keeps two or three days in the fridge, though the aromatics are freshest and most lifted on the first night.

Cellar

1-3 years

Drink it young, ideally within a year or two of the vintage: Puntinata is prized for fresh perfume rather than age, and a few years in bottle strip its aromatics away first.

Buy it · three to start with

Not sure which bottle? Start here

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

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Where it grows

The places it calls home

Lazio

Lazio is Frascati country with a serious red side. Volcanic whites from the Castelli Romani, Cesanese on the Ciociaria hills, and a Roma DOC reaching for Read more

87 wines · 35 denominations

Umbria

Italy's landlocked green heart, where Montefalco Sagrantino brings the deepest tannins on the peninsula and Orvieto's tufa cliffs ripen the country's most Read more

132 wines · 21 denominations

The terroir

Malvasia del Lazio barely strays from home. Its world is the Castelli Romani, the ring of old volcanoes and hilltop towns just southeast of Rome, where mineral-rich volcanic soils and the fine Puntinata clone together give Frascati its perfume and structure. Beyond central Lazio it thins out fast.

The Castelli Romani

The volcanic Colli Albani hills and their fourteen hilltop towns southeast of Rome, home of Frascati and Marino and the Castelli Romani and Roma DOCs.

Puntinata's true heartland: grown on porous volcanic tufo, pozzolana and weathered basalt, it is the noble grape that lifts Frascati Superiore above the everyday carafe, lending apricot, honey and a mineral core.

The Umbrian edge

The northern frontier where the Orvieto zone laps across the border from Lazio into southern Umbria.

Only a marginal outpost: here the grape shows up as a minor blending partner at the shared Orvieto frontier, well behind Procanico and Grechetto, and never carries a wine the way it rules the Roman hills.

Editorial

About Malvasia Puntinata

The Italian national catalogue lists Malvasia Puntinata as Malvasia del Lazio. Its everyday name comes from the small dark spots that mark its golden-green berries as harvest nears. The variety is one of the most distinctive of the wide Malvasia family. It is separate from the neutral Malvasia Bianca Lunga of Tuscany and from the perfumed Malvasia Bianca di Candia of Emilia. Its homeland is the volcanic crescent of the Castelli Romani south of Rome. Frascati, Marino, Grottaferrata and Monte Porzio Catone have built their wine identity around it.

The grape's nickname is written on the fruit itself. As the bunches ripen on the Roman hills, the skins of Malvasia del Lazio freckle with tiny dark dots, the puntini that give it the everyday name Puntinata: a spotted-berry grape a grower can pick out in the vineyard long before it ever reaches the glass.

Malvasia del Lazio (Puntinata), Castelli Romani

Already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Roman wine merchants prized Malvasia del Lazio above the local Trebbiani. They valued its perfumed juice and its richer texture. They supplied the osterie of Rome, and the pilgrim traffic that crossed the city. The grape thrives on the loose volcanic tuff of the Lazio volcano. Strong day-night temperature swings there protect the natural acidity and boost the terpene aromas. Vine training is typically guyot or cordone speronato. Growers keep yields down to avoid the botrytis pressure that the medium-compact bunches invite in damp years.

In the cellar the wine stays mostly in stainless steel at cool temperatures. That locks in the citrus, peach and white-flower aromas. Some Castelli producers add a brief spell on the lees, or a partial pass in wood, for volume. The dry style dominates Frascati DOC, Frascati Superiore DOCG, Marino DOC and Roma DOC. Cannellino di Frascati DOCG turns the grape into a late-harvest passito of honey, candied citrus and dried chamomile. Smaller plantings reach Bianco Capena DOC, Velletri DOC, Cori DOC and the southern hills of Umbria.

Good to know

Frequently asked

Malvasia Puntinata is an aromatic white grape native to Lazio. Its official name in the register is Malvasia del Lazio. It takes its everyday name from the dark spots that mark its berries at harvest. It is the principal white variety of Frascati DOC, Cannellino di Frascati DOCG and Roma DOC.

Yes. Malvasia del Lazio is the official name in the Italian national vine catalogue. Malvasia Puntinata is the everyday name used by the trade and by growers. It comes from the small dark spots, or puntinature, on the berries.

Most of it is dry. The grape leads the dry whites of Frascati DOC, Marino DOC and Roma DOC. The sweet, late-harvest style sits inside Cannellino di Frascati DOCG. There the same fruit dries on the vine to become a honeyed passito.

It is semi-aromatic, which places it in the middle of the family. On one side is the neutral Malvasia Bianca Lunga of Tuscany. On the other are the openly perfumed Malvasia Bianca di Candia of Emilia and the herbaceous Malvasia Istriana of Friuli Venezia Giulia. The Lazio version leans on stone fruit, white flowers and Mediterranean herbs.

It is pale gold in the glass. The aromas run to acacia blossom, peach, apricot and citrus zest, with a savoury herbal lift. The palate is medium bodied, with balanced acidity and a stony volcanic finish. That finish reflects the tuff soils of the Castelli Romani.

Roman classics. Try porchetta di Ariccia, cacio e pepe, abbacchio scottadito, fritto misto di paranza or carciofi alla giudia. The sweet Cannellino di Frascati version partners crostata di visciole and aged pecorino romano.

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Wine styles made from Malvasia Puntinata

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