Valle d'Itria IGT The Trulli Valley's Open Label, from Minutolo to Susumaniello

The valley's DOCs are precise little contracts. Locorotondo and Martina Franca fix their Verdeca blends, and Ostuni guards Impigno and Ottavianello. The IGT, recognised in 1995, is the space between them. It lets the valley's growers work outside those formulas without giving up the valley's name. Growers use it for an aromatic Fiano Minutolo bottled on its own, or a serious Susumaniello. The same label covers a Verdeca left on its skins, or a passito from Moscatello Selvatico. All of them carry Valle d'Itria on the label. The stricter names would refuse them. The rules ask for very little. A named variety must fill 85 percent of the bottle. Yields must stay under the loose ceiling of 22 tonnes. The fruit must come from the eight communes of the high karst. Those are Alberobello and Locorotondo on the Bari side. Cisternino, Fasano, Ceglie Messapica and Ostuni sit in Brindisi, with Crispiano and Martina Franca towards Taranto. In practice the label marks the valley's experimental shelf. It is where the white-wine revival of Minutolo, the valley's own aromatic grape, has largely happened. When a bottle from trulli country carries a grape name the DOCs do not admit, this is the label it wears.