Lombardia

Sometimes Lombardy may seem dwarfed by its capital, Milan, the centre of banking, commerce, industry and effortless northern style, but Lombardy is also an agricultural hub, supplying grains, vegetables and a significant amount of cattle – along with the attendant dairy industry that includes some of Italy’s most famous cheeses – to the rest of Italy. Wine is a prominent feature of Lombardian agriculture too. In volume terms it languishes in the middle of the Italian pack, but boasts some enviable DOCs, and although its most productive area, Oltrepò Pavese, has a modest reputation, its potential is really quite exciting.

Lombardia

Prosecco may be Italy’s most famous and widely drunk sparkling wine, but it is with Lombardy’s Franciacorta that Italian fizz reaches its apotheosis. Using the traditional grapes of Champagne – Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but eschewing Pinot Meunier and including the largely redundant (in Champagne) Pinot Blanc (Pinot Bianco) – as well as the traditional method, Franciacorta lays an eminently supportable claim to producing the world’s finest sparkling wine outside of Champagne. Although these most French of grapes have been grown in the region for a couple of hundred years at least, the sleek and well-oiled machine that is Franciacorta is a relatively modern thing. Metodo classico wines have only been produced since the latter half of the 20^th century, even if the stately presence of today’s estates seemingly belies this fact. The zone is also responsible for still red and white wines, with the sparkling varieties forming the white, and Bordeaux varieties making up the red; the DOC is now known as Curtefranca.

Valtellina in Lombardy’s northernmost reaches, on the border with Switzerland, has some of the world’s most spectacular vineyard land and is Italy’s second home for Nebbiolo (locally known as Chiavennasca). Vertiginous terraces to rival those of the Mosel make the most of sun in the cool conditions and contribute a nervy minerality that characterises the wines. The wines may not have quite the gravitas of Barolo, but they are profoundly individual, fragrant and undeniably connected to their territory.

Sharing its territory across lake Garda with the Veneto, Lugana is a district long celebrated for the production of taught and subtly aromatic wines made from Trebbiano. Trebbiano di Lugana, which is also known as Trebbiano di Soave in Soave, and is almost certainly Verdicchio, is a grape vastly superior to Trebbiano Toscano and is responsible for some of Italy’s more compelling white wines. Though the DOC straddles two regions, it is perhaps only fair to point out that Lugana is generally regarded as a wine of the Veneto.