Antonelli – Trebbiano Spoletino – 2010

Trebbiano - Italy’s great workhorse white grape variety – is the second most planted varietal in the world, by area under vine (the most planted of all being Spain’s white workhorse grape, Airén), responsible for up to 30% of Italian white grape plantings.  It is less well-known than it could be as it is blended into an ocean of mediocre table wine and typically fails to appear on bottle labellings. In France, it re-occurs as Ugni Blanc and is a key – and much valued – component in Cognac and Armagnac, while Trebbiano plantings have also followed Italian migrants around the world to Australia and Argentina, among other places. Within Italy itself, there is a huge diversity of local names for, and varieties of, Trebbiano. Most of the Trebbiano plantings in Umbria are of Trebbiano Toscana; this Antonelli wine comes from the more distinguished but very rare Trebbiano Spoletino variety, of which only 150 acres exist across all of Italy.

Straw yellow with green highlights – the colour suggests a wine that is still fresh. There is a surprisingly rich, fruit-driven nose, like ripening pear or melon (so different from the typically bland, unidentifiable bouquet of common-or-garden Trebbiano); as the wine opens, it tends towards the tropical (passion fruit) but on the palate retains the tartness of greengages or even grapefruit. There is no toastiness to the wine, but a definite vanilla from some (not all) of it having spent time in large oak barrels. Although my first impression of the wine was of an interesting alternative to New Zealand Sauvignon, with time, the vanilla and passion fruit dominate and it seems more Californian than anything else. Returning to this the following day, round waxy lemons have made a prominent arrival. While I feel no need to age this wine, it has the structure to support a good decade of aging. I’ve only come across Spoletino once before (see Adarmando, April 2013) and this is quite different, but both are much more interesting than the Trebbiano norm.  

84/100