Umbria

Umbria is the only region in central Italy with no coastline, and the isolation shows in the wine. It has the most tannic red grape in the country, a white that turns out to be two different varieties wearing one name, and soils laid down by a lake that disappeared a million years ago.

The Landscape Almost 30 per cent of the territory is mountain, 63 per cent hill and only 6 per cent flat. The Tiber runs through it from Città di Castello down to Todi, and the Valle Umbra opens alongside; Lake Trasimeno, the fourth largest in Italy, sits to the west. Being landlocked and folded gives Umbria a wide swing between day and night temperature, which is the single most useful thing about its climate — it is what lets the grapes ripen without losing their aromatics. Geologically the western side resembles Tuscany, while the east shows the carbonate successions of the Umbria-Marche Apennines.

Lake Tiberino The region’s defining geological fact no longer exists. For roughly three million years, through the Pliocene and much of the Pleistocene, a vast lake covered the ground from Città di Castello to Spoleto and from Perugia to Città della Pieve. Lake Tiberino laid down the sediments that underlie most of flat Umbria, and lignite beds and the bones of mammals still turn up in the soil from the creatures that lived on its shores. Its deposits matter directly: Sagrantino’s power comes largely off Plio-Pleistocene lacustrine ground with a strong clay content, clayey-calcareous soils mixed with grey marl, tuff and volcanic residue, and only the better-exposed hillsides are considered worth planting.

Etruscans, Monks and a Currency The Etruscans were cultivating vines systematically here from the eighth and seventh centuries BC — vine seeds of the period have been found around Lake Bolsena — and within a few centuries Orvieto had become the centre of Etruscan wine in the region. The Romans industrialised it: winemaking equipment has been excavated at Pliny the Younger’s villa at San Giustino, and the river villas along the Tiber existed largely to move wine down to Rome. Then the monks. Benedict of Norcia wrote wine into the rule of his order, recommending moderation on the grounds that it could mislead even the wisest, and Benedictines returning from pilgrimage brought cuttings home with them. Wine became valuable enough in medieval Umbria to be used as currency — paid out for goods, for works of art, and for frescoes.

The Grapes Sagrantino is the region’s signature and one of the most tannic wine grapes anywhere on earth, grown around Montefalco and made both dry and, traditionally, as a sweet passito. Sangiovese is more widely planted and carries Torgiano and much of the everyday red. Among whites, Grechetto is the name to be careful with: ampelographic work has established that Grechetto di Todi and Grechetto di Orvieto are separate varieties, not clones of one, and the Todi version is identical to Emilia’s Pignoletto. Trebbiano Spoletino, pulled back from near-disappearance around Spoleto, is the most exciting white the region has produced in a generation.

The Critical Take Sagrantino’s tannin is its identity and its commercial problem. Made badly it is simply punishing, and even made well it needs a decade that almost nobody gives it; the best producers have spent twenty years learning to manage extraction rather than maximise it. Orvieto has the Soave problem — a historically great name devalued by decades of high-volume, low-interest bottling, with a handful of growers now quietly making excellent wine under it. Trebbiano Spoletino is where the region’s upside actually sits. And Montefalco Rosso, mostly Sangiovese with a little Sagrantino for grip, is the sensible everyday answer that the region undersells.

At the Table Black truffle from Norcia shaved over everything, lentils from Castelluccio, torta al testo cooked on a stone, wild boar, porchetta, and the pork charcuterie that Norcia is so associated with that norcineria became the Italian word for a pork butcher. Sagrantino wants the boar; Montefalco Rosso wants the rest.

Where to Start Montefalco Rosso first, to meet the grape at a manageable volume. Then a Sagrantino with ten years on it, and a Trebbiano Spoletino from a serious grower.