The Spirit World

I’ve had the good fortune to visit the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region, featured in this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, several times on business. I went to Trieste which is about as far round you can go in Italy in a north east direction before you hit Slovenia. It’s a very pleasant place, obviously Italian but with a certain foreign air to it probably due its history - it was part of Austria - its proximity to Slovenia and its distance from most of the rest of Italy.My colleagues and I had spent a day with our hosts and had gone back to our very nice hotel and headed for the bar. One of my American colleagues in fluent Italian asked for a good bottle of local white wine. What we got was from Le Vigne di Zamo and was their Tocai Friulano varietal.

It was soft and flowery with hints of apricot and citrus and a very well made wine with balance and length. It was the perfect end to a long day. It is from the Colli Orientali del Friuli sub region which literally translated, means the hill facing East in Friuli”. Research since I got back shows that this producer has a good reputation, worthy of a mention in Oz Clarke’s latest Pocket Wine Book for 2008 as well as the Jancis Robinson/Hugh Johnson World Atlas of Wine.

Photo courtesy of Le Vigne di Zamo.

This round of Wine Blogging Wednesday is hosted by Fork and Bottle