Wine Arcana

Grape

Trebbiano Spoletino

Trebbiano Spoletino is a white grape associated with the area around Spoleto and Montefalco in Umbria. Its current interest lies in the range of wines growers make from it: white blends, varietal whites, prolonged skin-contact wines, and sparkling wine. Those interpretations offer different answers to the question of how much texture to draw from a white grape.

Its historical home includes vines grown with living trees as supports. Antonelli reports selecting propagation material from old vines trained on maples, while growing its Trebium vineyard with modern Guyot training. That example connects the survival of local vine material with contemporary vineyard management.

Growing the grape

Vivai Cooperativi Rauscedo describes Trebbiano Spoletino as vigorous and productive, with late budbreak, thick-skinned berries, and bunches that can be fairly compact. Its guidance favours expanded training and medium to long pruning. These traits put the distribution of shoots and fruit at the centre of vineyard decisions.

A vigorous vine needs sufficient leaf area to ripen its crop, but crowded foliage can shade bunches and slow drying after rain. Canopy management helps growers balance those demands, with the amount of growth to retain depending on site and season.

Pressed whites and time on the lees

For a conventionally made white, pressing separates juice from the solids before alcoholic fermentation. Short skin contact before pressing and later lees ageing can still build texture without turning the wine into a skin-fermented white.

Antonelli's Trebium illustrates that distinction. The producer describes a brief period of skin contact, soft pressing, fermentation in large oak, and six months on the lees. Those steps affect different parts of the wine: contact before pressing extracts material from the grapes, while the lees are the sediment left by fermentation.

Skin contact and sparkling wine

The same estate's Vigna Tonda explores a longer encounter with the skins, using clay vessels and spontaneous fermentation. This belongs to the broader practice of skin-contact white wine, in which extracting phenolic material can add grip as well as alter colour and aroma.

Antonelli also produces a traditional-method sparkling version. Together, these bottlings demonstrate that the grape's modern regional role extends beyond a single still-white style. In the local appellation system it is also required to supply at least half of Montefalco Bianco: the specification incorporating the 2023 amendments sets a minimum of 50%.1. Montefalco DOC production specification, consolidated 2023 text, article 2, consulted 28 September 2026.

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