Wine region · Italy

Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Pinot Grigio, white wines, Collio. The father of modern Italian whites.

The region

The story of Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Northeast Italy's white wine heartland — Collio and Isonzo produce some of Italy's most precise and mineral whites.

Friuli-Venezia Giulia is Italy's northeastern border region — politically complex (it was part of the Habsburg empire, then Yugoslavia, then Italy) but viticulturally singular. The Collio hills, running along the Slovenian border east of Gorizia, produce whites of extraordinary freshness and mineral precision.

Mario Schiopetto, working from the Collio in the 1960s and 70s, essentially invented modern Italian white wine — pioneering cold fermentation, skin-contact reduction and vineyard selection at a time when Italian whites were considered at best functional. His Pinot Grigio remains the benchmark for the variety in Italy.

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