A taste of Terroir: Alpine Italy

Look up to the Alps and you wouldn’t be the only person convinced that all that limestone is what gives Alpine wines their unique characteristics. It’s true that the soils around the Italian Alpine regions of Alto Adige, Lombardy, and Valle d’Aosta are especially rich with minerals deposited millions of years ago, but it’s not only the massifs that dictate how wines from these regions taste. Climate, altitude and vineyard practices all share the glory.

In most wine regions around the world, altitude is a useful factor that helps regulate temperature in hotter climates. In the Alpine Italy wine regions however, altitude offers a wider and more dynamic diurnal range, which is the difference between day and night temperatures. The incredibly tall, steep slopes shaped in all directions by ancient glacial movement also offer infinite possibilities for the perfect vineyard aspect. The Alps are blessed with strong, bright sunshine in the winter and summer, and when the air is not foggy or thick with snowclouds, this sunshine is what enables the grapes here to ripen to their full potential. Pair this daytime sunshine with cold, clear, high altitude nights, and you’ve got the ideal conditions for vines to ripen slowly with plenty of cold periods to lengthen the ripening period. This is particularly useful for the indigenous varieties which ripen early.

The way the vineyards are planted also affects the way in which the grapes ripen. Pergolas are used extensively in the Italian Alps for their practicality—frames for the vines keep the plants off the frosty ground and high enough away from snow that they are not damaged. When the snow melts, they provide a touch more height and separation to increase airflow—important in regions like Alto Adige when the air can become very stagnant and overheated in the valleys.