Sauvignon Blanc

Sauvignon Blanc is a French native, born on the marl and gravel of the Loire Valley and Bordeaux, where its name traces to sauvage, or wild. Genetic work catalogued by the VIVC makes it an offspring of Savagnin and, crossed with Cabernet Franc, the parent of Cabernet Sauvignon. It reached Italy in the nineteenth century and entered the national vine register in 1970.

Its Italian home is Friuli-Venezia Giulia, which holds close to a third of the country's plantings. On the ponca marls of the Collio and Colli Orientali it makes the tautest, flintiest Sauvignon in Italy, historically sharing the hill with Friulano, the grape once muddled with Sauvignon's own green-berried biotype, Sauvignonasse. Labels here often read simply Sauvignon.

In Alto Adige and neighbouring Trentino, high vineyards and cold nights sharpen the aromatics to a piercing elderflower and nettle intensity, alongside cellar-mates Pinot Bianco and Chardonnay. Growers such as San Michele Appiano set the mountain benchmark.

On the Tuscan coast, warmth and a touch of oak broaden the grape into peach and fennel, most famously in Ornellaia's Poggio alle Gazze, which is roughly half Sauvignon. At the other extreme, Carso growers like Radikon ferment it on its skins into an orange wine; our guide to how orange wine is made covers the method. From steel-fresh to skin-macerated, few white grapes shift so far across one country.