A two-hour drive southeast from Milan takes you to a place called Scandiano, where the Po River Plain joins the Apennines, the flatness beginning to undulate. It is in this undulating area that the Spergola grape was born hundreds of years ago.
The owner of Aljano Winery told me Spergola meant “spreading out”, depicting exactly their loose bunches, an advantage when the rainfall is high, reducing the risk of berries contracting fungal diseases.
In Scandiano, Spergola for a long time had been mistaken for Sauvignon Blanc. The book Wine Grapes says the misunderstanding is due to the appearance of the vine and the fruit (ampelography), not the aroma or flavour. Indeed, the aroma and flavour of Sauvignon Blanc is very different from that of Spergola.
When I visited Aljano in early September, I was supposed to retaste their sparkling wines and relive the lovely memories of Milan’s Best Wine Stars fair back in May (a great annual wine fair, highly recommend it), but Aljano’s owner, being Italian, the most hospitable people on earth, wouldn’t allow “tasting only the bubbly” to happen. Bubbly, still, white, red, rosé, you name it, he opened it.
Bubbly aside, the most impressive wine I tasted that day was Brezza di Luna.
Made from 100% Spergola grapes, Brezza di Luna first greets you with an almost petroleum-like mineral scent, followed by the sweet aroma of peach and pineapple, with a hint of tart citrus. Layers of fruit and minerality are intertwined in wonderful harmony on the palate. The solid finish of tart citrus and pineapple just lingers on and on, and on. If you happened to blend Riesling with Chardonnay of both cool and warm regions, you’d achieve something delightfully similar to Brezza di Luna.
It feels to me like the wine gods had encoded this unique characteristic into Spergola’s DNA centuries ago, as if to tell 21st century winemakers in advance, “Hey, save all the blending hassle, Spergola is your answer.” But the grape gods seemed to have been just whispering, so very few winemakers today know about it. Yes, Spergola is little known, but this also makes this variety all the more intriguing and precious.
Brezza di Luna is vinified in temperature-controlled steel vats, and bottled after a brief maturation in steel, with no wood influence, to bring out the intrinsic charm of Spergola.
The most delicious white I’ve tasted lately was a Chenin Blanc from Spier Winery in South Africa, but in that case, the wood barrel contributed a lot to the aroma and flavour of the wine. Whereas in the case of Brezza di Luna, on its own feet, with no wood no nothing else, it stands up as an amazing wine. For this reason I believe Spergola is a magic variety.
Like destined for many other varieties, phylloxera and the two world wars had almost wiped out Spergola back in the 19th and the 20th centuries, but now, in the 21st century, as the revival of native grapes is sweeping through every corner of the winemaking Europe, we’re fortunately guaranteed more delicious Spergola white wines from Scandiano.
Cheers!
