Trebbiano Abruzzese

Trebbiano Abruzzese sits inside one of Italian wine's longest-running cases of mistaken identity. For decades the grape was treated as interchangeable with Trebbiano Toscano, the high-yielding workhorse known in France as Ugni Blanc. Genetic studies and the work of writers such as Ian d'Agata have since clarified that Trebbiano Abruzzese is a separate, indigenous variety, grown almost exclusively in Abruzzo and often co-planted with Bombino Bianco and Passerina in older vineyards.

The Trebbiano d'Abruzzo DOC, established in 1972, allowed any of Trebbiano Abruzzese, Trebbiano Toscano or Bombino Bianco to make up the mandatory 85 percent of the blend. That permissive disjunction is the reason commercial Trebbiano d'Abruzzo varies so much in style: the cheapest bottles are usually Trebbiano Toscano, while the most ambitious are pure or near-pure Trebbiano Abruzzese.

The grape's serious champions live in the Pescara and Teramo provinces. Valentini in Loreto Aprutino has bottled some of Italy's longest-lived whites under the Trebbiano d'Abruzzo label since the 1960s. Emidio Pepe in Torano Nuovo works without temperature control or stabilisation, producing wines that age for decades in bottle. Tiberio at Cugnoli has restored old massal-selection vineyards and built the modern reference for what pure Trebbiano Abruzzese tastes like, while Valle Reale in Popoli farms cool, high-altitude sites between the Gran Sasso and the Majella.

In the glass, the grape gives a straw-yellow to golden colour, restrained aromatics of marzipan, nettle, caper flower and white peach, and a textural mid-palate built on saline minerality rather than upfront fruit. Acidity drops quickly when the grape over-ripens, and the must oxidises easily, so harvest timing and reductive winemaking matter more here than in almost any other Italian white.