Spoleto DOC

A denomination built around a single white grape, in the valley below Montefalco. It takes in the whole commune of Montefalco and parts of Campello sul Clitunno, Castel Ritaldi, Foligno, Spoleto and Trevi — the same ground as Umbria’s most famous red, turned over to the variety that grew there before Sagrantino was fashionable.

The Terroir The registered file is specific. The territory is for the most part flat, crossed by the river Clitunno and by numerous streams and tributaries, at an altitude between 200 and 550 metres. The climate is strongly influenced by the reliefs flanking the valley: the Umbro-Marchigiano Apennine to the east means the dominant winds come from the western quadrants. Rainfall averages 800 mm a year, in a temperate climate with a dry summer.

The Grape The file is honest about what it does not know: the origins of Trebbiano Spoletino are not known, but it can certainly be held to be native and autochthonous to the delimited territory, given that its cultivation is verifiable already from the nineteenth century. That is a careful sentence, and more useful than the invented antiquity most files reach for. Trebbiano Spoletino is unrelated to the workhorse Trebbiano Toscano; it is late-ripening, thick-skinned, and holds acidity in a way that makes long ageing and skin contact both possible.

Vines in the Trees The historic training here was the alberata — vines run up living maples and elms, harvested from ladders. It survived in this valley into living memory because the same field carried grain below and grapes above, and a handful of those old tree-trained vines still exist, some of them very old and ungrafted. Wines from them are made in tiny quantity and are the most interesting thing in Umbrian white wine.

The Critical Take Trebbiano Spoletino is the best white grape in central Italy and it was nearly abandoned, because Sagrantino paid better and because a variety that ripens in late October is inconvenient. What has happened since about 2005 is a genuine recovery: made cleanly it gives white peach, fennel and salt with a firm, almost tannic grip; made with skin contact it becomes something else entirely and lasts a decade. The denomination is small, most of it is drunk in Umbria, and the good bottles cost a fraction of the Sagrantino from the next row.

The Clitunno The river that crosses the zone rises from the Fonti del Clitunno, springs the Romans held sacred and that Virgil, Propertius and Pliny the Younger all described. Byron wrote about them too. The valley’s water and the mist it throws are part of why a late-ripening grape works here.

At the Table Umbrian cooking: strangozzi with truffle, river trout, chickpeas and farro, roast pork, and pecorino. The skin-contact versions handle far more than a white usually can. Serve at 11–13°C, warmer than instinct suggests.

Benchmark Producers Tabarrini, Paolo Bea, Antonelli San Marco.