white grape · regional staple
Ortrugo
Colli Piacentini, Italy
On the palate
green applewhite flowersjasmineapricotcitrusalmond
How you spot it blind: dry white with a marked bitter almond finish
The story
First written down · 1788, Piacenza
Native to the Piacenza hills, it was long used for blending rather than on its own. By the mid 1960s it had almost vanished, but local growers revived it in the early 1970s by vinifying it alone, and it later received its own DOC in the early 1980s. The modern form of the name appears in print in 1927 in Italia Agricola.
Where it lives
Colli Piacentini (Piacenza), Italy
Shows up as
still whitesparkling
Also answers to Piacenzi Ortrugo.
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