Most Italian white wine is built to be drunk young and cold. Greco di Tufo is the exception. Grown at 500 metres on the chalk and sulphur of San Paolo, it carries a laser-sharp saline tension that lets it age — gracefully — for five, sometimes ten years. In a good vintage, it is Italy's most aristocratic white.
The soil is the whole story
Tufo's soils are unique even within Campania. The sulphur that once powered a mining industry now infuses the Greco grapes with a smoky, gunmetal minerality. The high altitude preserves the acidity, so the wine keeps its backbone where most southern whites go fat. Gabriella Ferrara's 'Vigna Cicogna' is the single-vineyard benchmark — and, conveniently, one of the first bottles we ever shipped to the UK.
We believed Greco could sparkle alongside Champagne — and it can. But still Greco di Tufo is the proof: volcanic fruit, patience on the lees, no compromise.
Serving it at home
- Serve at 10–12°C — chilled, but not ice-cold, or the minerality closes up.
- Open it ten minutes before pouring; it does not need decanting.
- A tulip-shaped white-wine glass, not a flute, to carry the aromatics.
- If you have the patience, lay a bottle down. It rewards it.
If you have only ever drunk Greco di Tufo young, find an older bottle and pour it beside a fresh one. The transformation — from bright stone fruit to something nutty, waxy, and almost petrol-scented — is the whole argument for taking this grape seriously.
