Volpe Pasini Pinot
Bianco Zuc di Volpe: 1999-2017

BY IAN D'AGATA | FEBRUARY 11, 2020Volpe
Pasini is one of Italy’s oldest wine estates, with records demonstrating the
existence of a Volpe estate in 1596. The second half of the current name, Pasini,
was added later, at the end of World War II, when there were no more Volpe
heirs and the Pasini side of the family took over. Volpe Pasini has always had
an excellent reputation – apparently, it was the first winery to sell bottled
Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) wines in the USA – but the modern history of the
estate really began only in the mid-1960s with Giampaolo Volpe Pasini, who,
like many other Friuli winemakers of that generation, learned much of what he
knew about wine from Mario Schiopetto, the father of modern FVG wines. 

Today
the estate is owned by Emilio Rotolo, a former gastroenterologist originally
from Calabria. In 1995, Rotolo was looking for a country home where he could relax
and devote himself to reading. Upon seeing the Volpe Pasini estate, he was
immediately smitten with the beautiful Villa Rosa, a late-16th-century building
blessed with an amazing library. But as Rotolo likes to joke, “the real problem
was that the villa also had a very good cellar, and I was ruined! Bitten by the
wine bug, I started making wine. And so, instead of resting, I have never worked
as hard as I have in these 25 years of winemaking. Just imagine that there are
seven to eight thousand books in the library that I wanted to read, but I’ve
been so busy I haven’t been able to read one book!” Rotolo has a deadpan sense
of humor, but his love for wine and its lifestyle runs deep; after all, it can’t
be quite as bad as he makes it out to be, given that in 2014 he bought himself another
important winery (FVG’s famous Schiopetto estate). Of the many very successful,
noteworthy wines the estate has been associated with (for example, Volpe Pasini
once owned some of the region’s oldest and best Picolit vines, unfortunately
uprooted back in the late 1980s), it is their Pinot Bianco that most distinguishes
the winery, given the estate’s long association with this specific variety. In
fact, the 1933 Pinot Bianco, then labeled as Pinot Bianco Zucco, holds the
distinction of being, at least as far as I can tell, the first Italian estate-bottled
Pinot Bianco wine.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1581448722713-The+beautiful+Volpe+Pasini+villa_copy.jpg"> The beautiful Volpe Pasini villa 

The Grape Variety 

Pinot
Bianco (Pinot Blanc in French) is a member of the large Pinot family. Depending
on the individual clones and biotypes, Pinot Bianco is characterized by a
relatively tightly packed, compact grape bunch (hence the variety’s name, which
harkens back to the pine cone). It derives from Pinot Nero (Pinot Noir) and Pinot
Grigio (Pinot Gris), of which it is a somatic mutation. In Italy, its home is
FVG, where it has always been viewed as an important grape that can give high-quality,
ageworthy wines. Different from Alto Adige, the other Italian region where
outstanding Pinot Bianco wines are made, in FVG it has always been made as a
top-end wine, and often as the expression of a specific cru. (By contrast, with
very few exceptions, Pinot Bianco wines in Alto Adige were everyday quaffers,
and the wine was mostly sold, at least until very recently, in demijohns.) In
fact, the high esteem that Pinot Bianco has always enjoyed in FVG wine circles
is exemplified by the fact that Chardonnay has always played second fiddle to
it in the region; still today, most FVG old-timers consider Pinot Bianco the
superior of the two varieties. 


A
good Pinot Bianco offers aromas and flavors of orchard fruit, fresh citrus,
beeswax and white flowers; it is not a variety that is especially rich in thiol
molecules (as compared to Sauvignon Blanc, for example), so notes of passion
fruit, cut grass and green figs are practically absent in monovariety Pinot
Bianco wines (or they should be, so caveat
emptor). Most importantly, the variety’s wines have a telltale, immediately
recognizable, glyceral, mellow texture quite unlike that of any other white
wine you will ever taste. Unlike Chardonnay, a variety it was once mistakenly
thought to be related to, Pinot Bianco does not take well to strong oaking
regimens, as its delicate nature is easily camouflaged if not completely
overcome by strongly toasty and vanillin oak notes. Fortunately for all of us,
the vast majority of Italian Pinot Bianco wines are delicious, and some are truly
memorable. Volpe Pasini’s Pinot Bianco Zuc di Volpe is just such a memorable
wine.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1581448743538-Small+steel+tanks+at+Volpe+Pasini_copy.jpg"> Small steel tanks at Volpe Pasini 

The Zuc di Volpe Vineyard, Local Terroir
&amp; Wine

The
Zuc di Volpe vineyard is located in the Friuli Colli Orientali denomination,
which borders to the east another famous Friuli denomination, the Collio. The
winery is located in the Togliano sub-zone of Torreano, an area blessed with
one of the cooler and windier mesoclimates of the region. The end result is
that wines from Torreano are some of the sleekest and most refined of all those
made in FVG. The basic soil type is FVG’s classic ponca, a mix of mostly marl
and compacted sands with varying amounts of loam and limestone, but there are
many different types of&nbsp;ponca&nbsp;in
FVG. The&nbsp;ponca&nbsp;of Togliano is much
richer in limestone than many other poncas of the region (and in fact, whiter
in color than poncas of even nearby areas) and delays ripening, providing
grapes with longer potential hang times. For example, the same grape variety planted
in Togliano will reach full physiologic ripeness a full 15 days later than it
does in Capriva, just 25 kilometers to the east in the Collio denomination. The
Zuc di Volpe vineyard plots cover seven hectares and are planted to a number of
different varieties. The Pinot Bianco grapes used to make the Pinot Bianco Zuc
di Volpe are located in a single one-hectare vineyard, planted mostly in 1997 (it
had to be replanted over time due to disease and lack of productivity) and farmed
sustainably. A small quantity of dry ice is used when the grapes arrive at the
cellar to avoid the oxidation of too many aromatic precursors. Maceration on
the skins lasts a few hours, lees contact is eight months long at least, and vinification
and aging take place in stainless steel tanks only. The wine is named in honor
of the founding Volpe family.&nbsp; 

Most of the wines described in this
report were tasted on two separate occasions, in May 2019 (from bottles sourced
directly at the Volpe Pasini winery) and in October 2019 (bottles from my own
cellar, bought upon release).<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/wines?sort%5Bdirection%5D=desc&amp;sort%5Bname%5D=vintage&amp;wf_dirty=false&amp;wf_export_fields=&amp;wf_export_format=&amp;wf_id=&amp;wf_match=all&amp;wf_model=Wine&amp;wf_name=&amp;wf_order=vintage&amp;wf_order_type=desc&amp;wf_page=1&amp;wf_per_page=25&amp;wf_submitted=true&amp;wf_type=WillFilter%3A%3AFilter&amp;wine_filter%5Barticle_id%5D=2517&amp;wine_filter%5Bproducer_id%5D=2159">See the Wines from Youngest to Oldest</a><hr>You Might Also Enjoy<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/friuli-venezia-giulia-the-new-releases-jan-2020">Friuli Venezia Giulia: The New Releases</a>, Ian D'Agata, January 2020 <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/friuli-venezia-giulia-a-wine-smorgasbord-may-2018">Friuli Venezia Giulia: A Wine Smorgasbord</a>, Ian D'Agata, May 2018 <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/miani-ribolla-gialla-pettarin-2000-2015-dec-2017">Miani Ribolla Gialla Pettarin: 2000 – 2015</a>, Ian D'Agata, December 2017 <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/ronco-del-gelso-s-pinot-grigio-sot-lis-rivis-2006-2015-oct-2017">Ronco del Gelso Pinot Grigio Sot lis Rivis 2006 – 2015</a>, Ian D'Agata, October 2017

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