Bruna Vermentino '21

Any discussion of the great white wines of Italy must include Liguria. The lack of notoriety of the wines is from a combination of factors. Liguria isn’t a large wine production zone, mostly because its terrain along the Italian Riviera offers little farmable land. As one of the most beautiful parts of Italy, there is a lot of tourism throughout the summer, which helps deplete much of the annual production. Finally, the majority of producers in Liguria have very little wine to sell, and as such don’t have the ability to market the wines like some regions in Italy, where big producers bring notoriety because of their large marketing budgets.

Azienda Agricola Bruna produces about 3,000 cases of wine from its eight hectares of vineyards in the Arroscia Valley in Western Liguria. Bruna is known as the benchmark producer of the Pigato variety, which the family refers to as a biotype of Vermentino. Today we are featuring a wine that was first introduced in 2016. This single-vineyard Vermentino comes from the village of Pogli, which lies east of Ranzo, the home base for Bruna. The soils of the Garaxin vineyard are limestone with white and blue clay. The grapes are harvested by hand, pressed, and fermented in stainless steel tanks.

The 2021 underwent partial malolactic fermentation. The result is perhaps Bruna’s brightest and most refreshing style. Citrus dominated on the nose, with plenty of mineral character from its fossilized soil. Like all Bruna’s wines, it has excellent balance. Drink this as an aperitif, or pair it with simply prepared shellfish. Don’t like it too much, though, as only 1,200 bottles were produced and only 60 of those came to Chicago!