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

The Valle d'Itria's DOCs are precise little contracts: Locorotondo and Martina Franca fix their Verdeca blends, Ostuni guards Impigno and Ottavianello. The IGT, recognised in 1995, is the space between them. It exists for the valley's growers to work outside those formulas without surrendering the valley's name: an aromatic Fiano Minutolo bottled varietally, a serious Susumaniello, a skin-contact Verdeca, a passito from Moscatello Selvatico, all carry Valle d'Itria on the label where the stricter names would refuse them. The rules ask only that a named variety fill 85 percent of the bottle, that yields stay under the loose ceiling of 22 tonnes, and that the fruit come from the eight communes of the high karst, Alberobello and Locorotondo on the Bari side, Cisternino, Fasano, Ceglie Messapica and Ostuni in Brindisi, Crispiano and Martina Franca towards Taranto. In practice the label marks the valley's experimental shelf, and 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.