Grechetto Valdichiana Toscana Doc

Grechetto Valdichiana Toscana Doc

Grechetto Valdichiana Tuscany DOC
Appellation: Grechetto Valdichiana Toscana Doc

Varietal: 85%Grechetto, 15% Incrocio Manzoni 6.0.13.
Winemaking: Soft crushing of grapes juice refrigeration at 10 °C and fermentation at 18 °C . 6 Months maturation on the lees and 2 months aging in bottle.
Description: Vivacious wine with a floral and fruity nose with flavors lime and citrus fruit muddled with pear and almond.
We recommend serving white wines at 10℃.
Grechetto or Grechetto bianco (white). Grechetto is a white Italian wine grape variety of Greek origins. The grape is planted throughout central Italy, particularly in the Umbria region where it is used in the Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) wine Orvieto and Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) wine Valdichiana Toscana. It is primarily a blending grape, though some varietal wine is also produced. The grape’s thick skin provides good resistance to downy mildew which can attack the grape late in the harvest season. This makes Grechetto a suitable blending grape in the production of Vin Santo.
Grechetto is an Italian white grape variety that has its origins and is still common in region Umbria and in the south-west of Tuscany. It is also cultivated in bordering regions, such as Marche, Lazio and Emilia-Romagna. The tricky thing about Grechetto, it’s been determined to be two varieties: Grechetto di Orvieto and Grechetto di Todi. Both are occasionally and inadequately referred to as “clones” but the two are not clones at all. In fact, they’re not even related. Usually, when we talk about Grechetto we refer to the Grechetto di Orvieto variety. Grechetto di Todi, on the other hand, has been found to be, from the genetic point of view, much similar to Pignoletto, an autochthonous variety of region Emilia.

Where does Grechetto come from?
When it’s about Italian wine, which is something as ancient as the people that produce it (let’s remember that, although wine as we know it is a relatively recent product, ancient Romans already drank a beverage made from fermented crushed grapes), popular tradition can be a reliable source of knowledge.
Given that the Italian words for Greece and Greek are respectively Grecia and Greco, the name “Grechetto” means “a small one from Greece” (from the adjective “greco” and the diminutive suffix “-etto”, with the addition of an /h/ for phonological reasons). The name could in all likelihood reveal the origin of the grape variety, which might have come from Greece through Romans and have found in central Italy a new home.