Assisi DOC

The western flank of Monte Subasio, taking in parts of Assisi, Perugia and Spello. It is a working vineyard beneath one of the most visited towns in Italy, and almost nobody who goes there notices it.

The Terroir The registered file gives the range: vineyard altitude between 180 and 750 metres, including steep hillside and some flat ground, with general exposure oriented west and south-west — away from the mountain, towards the Umbrian valley and the afternoon sun. Then a note the Umbrian files share and few others make: from the climatic point of view, the last decade has recorded an average increase in winter precipitation. And the antiquity: vine cultivation was very widespread here from the time of the Etruscans.

Grape Varieties Grechetto and Trebbiano lead the whites, with Passerina, Pecorino, Moscato Bianco and Müller-Thurgau permitted; the reds are Sangiovese-led with Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Nero. A Grechetto varietal and a rosso riserva are registered.

Monte Subasio The mountain is the reason for everything here. Its pink-and-white limestone built the basilica and most of the town; its bulk shelters the slope from the east; and the springs on its flank made settlement possible. The vineyards sit on its lower skirts on calcareous clay, between the olive terraces and the valley floor.

The Critical Take Assisi has the hardest commercial problem in Umbrian wine: several million visitors a year, almost none of whom come for the wine, and a name so strongly associated with something else that it cannot be used to sell a bottle. The wines are good — Grechetto here is fuller and rounder than the Orvieto version, and the Sangiovese has genuine freshness at altitude — but the denomination is small and most of what is made is drunk within sight of where it grew.

Saint Francis The Canticle of the Creatures, written here around 1224, is among the first literary texts in an Italian vernacular, and it praises frate sole and sora nostra matre terra, which produces diversi fructi con coloriti fiori et herba. It is not a wine poem, but it is the earliest Italian writing about the land that these vineyards sit on.

Grechetto, Again The white here is the same grape the site meets at Todi and Orvieto, and the comparison is worth making: Assisi sits between the two, higher than Orvieto and cooler than the Tiber valley, and its Grechetto lands between them — rounder than Orvieto’s, less overtly floral than the Todi clone. It is a useful third point on a line.

At the Table Umbrian cooking: strangozzi with truffle, torta al testo, roast pork, lentils from Castelluccio, and pecorino. Whites at 10–12°C, reds at 16–17°C.

Benchmark Producers Sportoletti at Spello, Tili, Di Filippo.