Glera is the white grape behind Prosecco, Italy's most celebrated sparkling wine.
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White Grape · Tuscany
Trebbiano Toscano
Trebbiano Toscano is central Italy's high-yielding everyday white, the same vine France calls Ugni Blanc and distils into almost all its Cognac and Armagnac: neutral and razor-sharp poured young, yet the straw-dried soul of Tuscan Vin Santo.
Trebbiano Toscano is the workhorse white grape of central Italy, planted across Tuscany, Lazio and Umbria. It anchors Frascati Superiore DOCG, Cannellino di Frascati DOCG and the Vin Santo wines of Chianti and Carmignano, and travels under the synonym Procanico in Orvieto, where it shapes one of Umbria's most exported whites.
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Denominations
Also known as
Same grape, many labels
France
Ugni Blanc
The very same vine, and France's most-planted white grape. Its thin, sharp, low-alcohol wine is grown by the sea of hectares in the Charente and distilled, not bottled, into Cognac and Armagnac.
Cognac country
Saint-Emilion des Charentes
The old Charentais name for the Cognac base grape, nothing to do with Bordeaux's Saint-Emilion. Distillers prize it for exactly what table-wine drinkers hold against it: high acid, low sugar and next to no flavour.
Central Italy
Procanico
The central-Italian name, used around Orvieto and on the island of Elba, usually for a lower-yielding, better strain of the grape: this is the Trebbiano that gives Umbria's Orvieto its cut alongside Grechetto.
The anchor fact: The plain Tuscan grape in the carafe is, vine for vine, the most-planted white grape in all of France. Under the name Ugni Blanc it is the base wine behind almost every bottle of Cognac and much Armagnac: one grape, many names, world-famous as a spirit that almost nobody drinks as wine.
Taste · Where it sits
What it’s actually like in the glass
Forget scores out of five. Here’s Trebbiano Toscano described against grapes you already know.
BodyLight, lean
LightFull
A slight, light-bodied wine by nature, and lighter still when it is cropped hard for volume: there is little flesh to it poured dry. The one time it gains real weight is as Vin Santo, where months of drying concentrate the shrivelled grapes into something viscous and rich.
TanninNone
NoneGrippy
A white with no tannin to speak of; whatever structure it carries comes from acid, not grip. Its whole architecture rests on sharpness and freshness rather than on any chew.
AcidityHigh, hard
SoftRacy
High, hard, mouth-watering acidity is the grape's defining asset and its ticket to fame: that low-sugar, high-acid, neutral juice is exactly what distillers want, which is why it becomes Cognac and Armagnac. In a still wine the same acid keeps a cheap carafe bracingly fresh.
Fruit & sweetnessBone dry, neutral
Bone drySweet
Poured as a table wine it is bone dry and deliberately neutral, closer to a squeeze of lemon than to orchard fruit, and it is that very blankness that suits it to brandy. The exception is total: dried and slow-fermented into Vin Santo, it turns raisiny, nutty and honeyed.
Key flavours
Lemon
Sharp, pithy lemon standing in for real fruit, the searing acidity that is the grape's true backbone and the very reason France distils it into clean spirit rather than bottling it.
Apple
A pale green-apple crunch, tart and clean, usually the clearest fruit a high-cropping Trebbiano manages to push past its own neutrality.
Almond
The bitter-almond, mandorla amara twist on the finish that runs through so many central-Italian whites, and the note that deepens to toasted almond in Vin Santo, which is exactly why cantucci are its natural partner.
Acacia
The faint acacia-honey and white-blossom lift that is about all the perfume a young Frascati or fresh Tuscan bianco offers, a soft floral top note over an otherwise plain-spoken wine.
Hay
Fresh-cut hay and dry straw, the country note that turns literal in Vin Santo, whose bunches are dried for months on cane mats and in airy lofts until they rattle.
Wet stones
A chalky, wet-tufo minerality that surfaces only in the low-yield bottlings off the volcanic hills of Frascati and the tufa of Orvieto, the stony grip a reined-in Trebbiano can find.
White peach
A little soft white-peach flesh in the riper central-Italian bottlings, about as much stone fruit as this lean, workhorse grape ever gives up.
Racy · Crisp
Round · Soft
Light-bodied
Bold · Full
Glera
Chardonnay
Pinot Grigio
Vermentino
Garganega
Cortese
Trebbiano Toscano
The map
Trebbiano Toscano is light to medium, crisp, fresh acidity, mapped against other white grapes you can buy. The closer a grape sits, the more its weight and freshness resemble Trebbiano Toscano.
Trebbiano Toscanolight to medium, crisp, fresh acidity
Gleraa close match
Chardonnayfuller, rounder
Pinot Grigioa close match
Vermentinoa close match
Garganegaa close match
Cortesea close match
Is this for you?
An honest gut-check
Reach for it when…
A bold red that just works
- You want the honest, cheap, ice-cold carafe white of central Italy, the Frascati or Tuscan bianco that Rome drinks by the litre with fried artichokes and pasta: buy it young, serve it cold, do not overthink it.
- You want to meet Vin Santo, Tuscany's amber, nutty, oxidative dried-grape dessert wine: this grape and Malvasia are what it is pressed from, and hard cantucci to dunk are the whole ritual.
- You like the idea of drinking the world's brandy grape as a wine: the same vine behind almost every bottle of Cognac and much Armagnac, here poured still and dry rather than distilled.
Maybe skip it if…
You’re after something else tonight
- You want an aromatic white with exotic or tropical fruit: this grape is prized precisely for having almost no aroma, the neutrality that makes clean spirit but a plain glass of wine.
- You are after the finer, ageworthy side of the Trebbiano name: that is Trebbiano Abruzzese, a genetically separate Abruzzo grape in the right hands, not this high-yield Tuscan workhorse that so often stands in for plain Trebbiano.
- You want a white to lay down: bottled dry it is made to be drunk inside a year or two, and only in Vin Santo form, sealed in caratelli for years, does it reward any patience.
Serving guide
Pour it at its best
Serve at
8-10°C
Serve it properly cold, around 8 to 10C: freshness is very nearly the whole point of a dry Trebbiano, so a firm chill does most of the work.
Decant
No
Never decant a young one: there is nothing folded up inside a dry Trebbiano to release, and air only tires its slender aromatics. Vin Santo, already oxidative, is a different animal.
Glass
Standard White Wine Glass
A plain standard white glass is all it asks; save the fine tulip stemware for grapes with more to say from the bowl.
Drink within
2-3 days
An opened bottle holds two or three days in the fridge, though its only real charm, that cold, tart freshness, is brightest on the first night.
Cellar
1-2 years
Drink it young: a dry Trebbiano is at its best within a year or two of the harvest and gains nothing from a cellar. The lone exception, once again, is Vin Santo, aged for years in sealed caratelli before it is ever released.
On the table
What to eat with Trebbiano Toscano
Start with the home-table matches that made the grape, then browse the full cuisine library.
Rome's carafe white
Pasta Cacio e Pepe
Cacio e pepe is Roman trattoria food, and a cold, neutral Frascati made from this grape is the litre-carafe wine poured beside it: its hard acidity slices clean through the pecorino-and-pepper fat while asking nothing of the dish, the humble local match no grander white improves on.
Tuscan bread soup
Pappa al Pomodoro
Thick Tuscan tomato-and-bread soup drips with new olive oil and sweet tomato; a fresh, sharp Trebbiano bianco from its own Tuscan backyard cuts the oil and lifts the tomato where a richer, oakier white would smother the plate.
Dunk in the Vin Santo
Cavallucci
These hard, spiced Sienese aniseed-and-almond biscuits exist to be dropped into a glass of Vin Santo, the dried-grape sweet wine this grape makes: the nutty, honeyed wine softens the biscuit and echoes its almonds, the set-piece end to a Tuscan meal.
Custard, pine nuts, Vin Santo
Torta Della Nonna
Grandmother's tart of lemon-scented custard under toasted pine nuts and icing sugar is a classic Tuscan close, and a small glass of Trebbiano Vin Santo meets it sweetness for sweetness while its acidity keeps the rich custard from cloying.
Browse every pairing
Buy it · three to start with
Not sure which bottle? Start here
A curated trio across the price range, then every Trebbiano Toscano on sale in the UK right now.
2 bottles
Denominations
Where it earns a name on the label
The appellations where Trebbiano Toscano plays a starring role.
BasilicataIGT
Cannellino di FrascatiDOCG
CiròDOC
Frascati SuperioreDOCG
Vin Santo del ChiantiDOC
Vin Santo del Chianti ClassicoDOC
Vin Santo di CarmignanoDOC
Vin Santo di MontepulcianoDOC
Where it grows
The places it calls home
Tuscany
From galestro hills in Chianti Classico to the single Brunello rise of Montalcino and the sea-facing Cabernets of Bolgheri, Tuscany is Italian wine's stage in Read more
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
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
The terroir
Grown flat out for sheer volume, this grape floods central Italy with pale, neutral wine; but the places that matter rein its yields in and give it a job to do, and each of its three heartlands puts it to a completely different use.
Tuscany and Vin Santo
The Chianti hills, Carmignano and Montepulciano, where it was long the white grape blended into red Chianti itself.
For generations it padded out and lightened old-style Chianti, until the top zone barred white grapes from the blend in 2006. Its real Tuscan calling is Vin Santo: dried on mats, pressed to a trickle and sealed with Malvasia into small caratelli for years, an amber, nutty, honeyed dessert wine.
The Roman hills
The volcanic Castelli Romani south east of Rome, home of Frascati and its sweet Cannellino.
This is the everyday white of the capital: Trebbiano with Malvasia off the volcanic tufo, made cheap, fresh and cold as the carafe wine of Roman trattorias, with the late-harvest Cannellino di Frascati its rare sweet turn.
Umbria and Orvieto
The tufa cliffs and clay around Orvieto, where a better biotype of the grape is called Procanico.
In Umbria the lower-yielding Procanico gives real cut and citrus, filling out the Orvieto blend alongside Grechetto: bone dry at its most common, but historically also an amabile and a noble-rot muffa nobile sweet wine off the tufa.
Editorial
About Trebbiano Toscano
Trebbiano Toscano traces a long Italian lineage. Pliny the Elder mentioned a vine he called Vini tribulanum, often considered the earliest written reference to a Trebbiano grape, and the variety was already established across Tuscan and Umbrian hills by the late Middle Ages. When the papal court moved to Avignon in the fourteenth century, vines travelled with it, and the grape crossed into France under the name Ugni Blanc. There it now covers more vineyard than in its homeland, supplying the base wine for Cognac and Armagnac.
The finest thing this bulk-white grape ever becomes is not a wine you pour cold but one you wait years for. Its bunches are laid out to shrivel for months on cane mats and in airy lofts, pressed to a sticky trickle, then sealed with the old lees, the madre, into little wooden caratelli and left through the seasons in a hot attic: the slow, oxidative making of Vin Santo, Tuscany's holy wine for cantucci.
Vin Santo del Chianti, Carmignano and Montepulciano (Tuscany)Inside Italy, Trebbiano Toscano is sanctioned in roughly eighty-five DOCs but only three DOCGs, a balance that captures its reputation as a grape of quantity rather than prestige. Tuscany remains its heartland, where it shaped centuries of straw-coloured everyday wines and was historically permitted in red Carmignano blends up to ten percent. In Lazio it forms the spine of Frascati Superiore DOCG with Malvasia Bianca di Candia, and in the late-harvest Cannellino di Frascati DOCG it concentrates botrytis-influenced sweetness. Across the Tiber in Umbria it travels as Procanico, the principal partner of Grechetto in Orvieto Classico.
The grape is late-budding, vigorous and high-yielding, with naturally elevated acidity and modest aromatics. Most expressions are lean, citrus-edged whites with a dry almond finish. Rigorous yield control delivers more textured Bianco Toscana IGT bottlings, while extended drying transforms the fruit into the honey, fig and walnut profile of Vin Santo del Chianti, Vin Santo di Carmignano and Vin Santo di Montepulciano.
Good to know
Frequently asked
Trebbiano Toscano is a light-bodied dry white with brisk acidity, lemon and green-apple fruit, and a characteristic dry almond note on the finish. Aromatics are typically restrained; the appeal is freshness and food-friendliness rather than perfume.
Trebbiano Toscano is most planted in Tuscany, Lazio and Umbria, where it is also called Procanico. It also appears in Emilia-Romagna and Marche blends, and is permitted across roughly eighty-five Italian DOC appellations.
Yes, Trebbiano Toscano and Ugni Blanc are the same variety. The grape travelled to France in the fourteenth century during the Avignon papacy and now supplies most of the base wine distilled into Cognac and Armagnac.
No. Trebbiano is an umbrella name covering several genetically distinct varieties. Trebbiano Toscano, Trebbiano Abruzzese, Trebbiano Spoletino, Trebbiano Romagnolo and Trebbiano Giallo are different grapes despite sharing the family name.
Trebbiano Toscano is the leading white grape of two DOCGs in Lazio: Frascati Superiore and the late-harvest Cannellino di Frascati. It also features in Vin Santo del Chianti, Vin Santo di Carmignano and Vin Santo di Montepulciano DOCs, and is permitted up to ten percent in red Carmignano DOCG.
Trebbiano Toscano pairs naturally with the simple seafood and vegetable cooking of central Italy: spaghetti alle vongole, fritto misto di mare and Roman-style carciofi alla giudia. Off-dry Orvieto suits soft sheep's-milk pecorino, while Vin Santo is the classic match for Tuscan cantucci.
Procanico is the Umbrian name for Trebbiano Toscano. It is the principal grape of Orvieto and Orvieto Classico, traditionally blended with Grechetto, and arguably the most reputable expression of the variety in central Italy.
Explore by style
Wine styles made from Trebbiano Toscano
Jump to the editorial guide for each style this grape turns up in.
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