Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Pedemontana* (Vino della Luna Trebbiano di
Modena Amabile; not just bubbly but also
sweet, with roughly forty grams per liter of
residual sugar).
vines are, for the most part, true Trebbiano
Abruzzese, and not Bombino Bianco, as has
been erroneously written elsewhere. Cristiana
Tiberio, owner of one of Italy's truly up-and-
coming estates, told me that Trebbiano Abru-
zzese is her favorite grape variety of those she
grows. In fact, her father, who has been work-
ing in wine all his life, quit his job as export
manager at another Abruzzo winery to found
his own estate (called Tiberio) after coming
upon an old forgotten vineyard of beautiful,
healthy-looking, fi fty-year-old Trebbiano Abru-
zzese vines. “There is no way you can confuse
it with Bombino Bianco, Trebbiano Toscano, or
any other such variety,” says Tiberio “because
they really look completely different. If any-
thing, I think it's Passerina that people most
often mistakenly identify as Trebbiano Abru-
zzese.” For example, the excellent producer of
Abruzzo wines called Faraone makes a white
wine labeled trebbiano d'Abruzzo that is actu-
ally made with Passerina instead.
In my opinion, Trebbiano Abruzzese is
characterized by large leaves with fi ve lobes,
and large, long, pyramid-shaped bunches with
medium-large berries that have little bloom.
The vine is vigorous, oidium sensitive, and dis-
likes excessively windy sites; acidity drops very
quickly if the grapes overripen. The large leaves
protect the berries very well from the sunlight,
and for this reason, the grapes rarely become
darker than a deep straw-green in color when
fully ripe; so unlike other
Trebbiano
s, Trebbi-
ano Abruzzese's berries almost never become
yellow-gold or reddish and this is true even
when the producer decides to deleaf in order to
maximize ripeness. There are two offi cially cer-
tifi ed clones of Trebbiano Abruzzese (VCR 3
and UBA-RA TR27), but numerous biotypes
also exist, which has only added to the diffi cul-
ties in accurately recognizing Trebbiano
Abruzzese in the vineyards (provided that those
showing you the grapevines aren't getting them
confused with Bombino Bianco or Passerina).
There appear to be at least two biotypes of Treb-
biano Abruzzese: Sbaganina, typical of the area
of Vasto, characterized by a medium-large
Trebbiano Abruzzese
where it's found:
Abruzzo.
national regis-
try code number:
322.
color:
white.
To be clear, the correct, offi cial name of the
variety is Trebbiano Abruzzese, not Trebbiano
d'Abruzzo: the latter is the name of the wine
made with this cultivar, though people have
taken to calling the grape and the wine by the
same name. The earliest reference to Trebbi-
ano Abbruzzese is by Molon (1906), who noted
that it was different from Trebbiano Campo-
lese, which had larger berries. However, Treb-
biano Abruzzese has always been confused
with other varieties, most notably Bombino
Bianco, from which it has been clearly distin-
guished only recently. In fact, the National
Registry currently lists both Bombino Bianco
and Empibotte (another name commonly used
by locals to refer to Trebbiano Abruzzese) as
erroneous synonyms. According to Domenico
Pasetti of the Pasetti estate, Trebbiano Abruz-
zese derives from Biancame, itself derived
from Trebbiano Toscano; a link between Bian-
came and Trebbiano Abruzzese was fi rst men-
tioned by Calò, Scienza, and Costacurta
(2006). Others, like Luigi Cataldi Madonna of
the Cataldi Madonna estate, believe there isn't
that much true Trebbiano Abruzzese in the
vineyards, as over the years a great deal of
Bombino Bianco and Trebbiano Toscano were
planted instead. “It is likely that only 20 per-
cent of all the
Trebbiano
s grown in Abruzzo are
really of the Abruzzese variety, though of
course, once turned into wine everything gets
labeled as Trebbiano d'Abruzzo,” he told me.
His winemaker, Lorenzo Landi, takes a less
dire view, saying that there is still quite a bit of
this high-quality
Trebbiano
in the countryside.
Francesco Valentini of the world-famous Val-
entini estate, who makes an outstanding wine
labeled Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, believes his
