Trentino-Alto Adige

One administrative region, two entirely different wine cultures. Alto Adige, German-speaking and formerly Austrian, makes some of the most consistent white wine in Italy. Trentino, Italian-speaking to its south, makes a great deal more wine and is known for far less of it. The line between them is not only linguistic.

The Landscape The region is almost entirely mountain, with peaks above 3,000 metres, and the vines are confined to the valley floors and the lower, better-exposed slopes — principally the Oltradige, the Rotaliana plain and the Vallagarina, all cut by the Adige and its tributaries the Noce, Isarco and Avisio. Despite the altitude the winters are not severe by Alpine standards: January averages sit between -5 and -10°C and summers reach 20–25°C, with four distinct climatic zones from sub-Mediterranean around the Sarca valley and upper Garda to true Alpine at the treeline.

A Continental Suture The region straddles the Insubric Line, the surface expression of the collision between the European and African plates, and the geology changes completely across it. North of the line every outcrop is metamorphic, remade by Alpine mountain-building. South of it the rock is sedimentary and layered. Above the South Tyrolean Porphyry Platform — the product of Permian submarine eruptions — lie conglomerates of red sandstone and Triassic marine dolomite mixed with volcanic tuff. Quaternary glaciers did the rest, leaving hanging side valleys such as the Val di Cembra.

Site by Site At Santa Maddalena above Bolzano, Schiava grows on terraced morainic slopes up to 700 metres, sheltered from wind and angled at the sun. At Termeno — Tramin, which gave Gewürztraminer its name — the aromatic Traminer climbs Monte Mendola to 1,000 metres on calcareous-dolomitic scree, where the swing between day and night temperature is what builds the aromatics. In the Piana Rotaliana, on the gravel fans of the Adige and the Noce, Teroldego has its only real home. Around Isera, Marzemino sits on basalt. And the Valle dei Laghi, running from Trento towards Garda, is mild enough to be a different country again.

Etruscan Buckets and Roman Barrels A bronze situla dug up at Cembra in 1825 pushes wine drinking here back to the fourth to sixth centuries BC, and fragments from Sanzeno show scenes of ritual offering and drinking. Pliny the Elder records that the wines of these valleys were stored in wooden barrels bound with wicker hoops — and remains found north of Bolzano on the Rittner Horn confirm it. The barrel was an Alpine invention that Rome adopted, and this is roughly where it came from.

The Grapes Alto Adige’s whites are its glory: Pinot Bianco, Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Riesling, Kerner, Sylvaner, Müller-Thurgau and above all Gewürztraminer. Its reds are Schiava — light, sour-cherry, pale, deeply unfashionable and lovely — and Lagrein, dark and firm, plus increasingly good Pinot Nero at altitude. Trentino answers with Teroldego, its serious red; Marzemino; Nosiola, which makes the dried-grape Vino Santo of the Valle dei Laghi; and the Chardonnay and Pinot Nero that go into Trento DOC, Italy’s other great traditional-method sparkling wine.

The Critical Take Alto Adige is the most reliable region in Italy, and unusually its cooperatives are among its best producers rather than its worst — a genuine anomaly worth noticing. The whites at altitude have gained rather than lost from a warming climate, at least so far. Trentino’s difficulty is volume: an enormous amount of its crop disappears into bulk wine and sparkling base, and Teroldego, which is capable of real distinction, is realised by only a handful of growers. Schiava is being pulled up in favour of things that sell better, which is a slow, quiet loss.

At the Table Speck, canederli dumplings, Schlutzkrapfen filled with spinach and ricotta, barley soup, venison, and apple strudel. The cooking is Austrian and the wines were built alongside it.

Where to Start An Alto Adige Pinot Bianco from a high site, then a Gewürztraminer from Termeno, then Teroldego Rotaliano to see what the southern half can do.