Trentino-Alto Adige is one administrative region holding two autonomous provinces, two official languages and two unrelated ideas about how a winery should be owned. A Trentino-Alto Adige wine region guide that treats it as a single place will explain neither half properly. The dividing line runs near Salorno, and above it the road signs, the grape names and the business structure all change at once.
What the two halves share is altitude. Vineyards climb from around 200 meters on the Adige valley floor to a thousand and beyond, and that vertical range does most of the work latitude does elsewhere.
Two provinces, one line on the map
The region has no DOCGs at all. Nine DOCs and four IGPs cover roughly 15,800 hectares, and more than 70 percent of what they produce is white — an unusual ratio for Italy and a function of the mountains rather than of local taste. A December 2016 newsletter that made the region its subject of the month put it plainly: Italy’s northernmost region, bordering Austria and Switzerland, dominated by the Rhaetian Alps and the Dolomites.
Bolzano province is Alto Adige, or Südtirol, and its first language is German. Trento province is Trentino, and it is Italian-speaking. Both hold wide autonomy from Rome, which is why their wine industries grew along different lines.
Alto Adige: cooperatives and mountain whites
Close to 70 percent of South Tyrolean wine comes out of cooperative cellars, and here the cooperatives sit at the top of the quality ladder rather than the bottom. The reason is the size of the holdings. Growers work hillside parcels measured in fractions of a hectare, and nothing at that scale can support a private cellar, a press and a sales operation.
Italy’s national statistics institute runs a decennial agricultural census addressed to roughly 1.7 million farms, reporting land use and workforce down to municipal level. That is the resolution you need to see a landscape built out of parcels this small. The cooperative is the machinery that turns a scattering of them into a wine with a name.
The subzones worth knowing
Alto Adige DOC carries a set of named subzones and they are not decorative. Valle Isarco, Eisacktaler in German, runs northeast from Bolzano and is the coldest of them, growing Sylvaner, Kerner, Müller-Thurgau and Veltliner. Terlano lies west of Bolzano on porphyry and is known for Pinot Bianco that ages far longer than an alpine white is supposed to.
Santa Maddalena and Colli di Bolzano are red zones on the slopes immediately above the city. Val Venosta runs west toward the Swiss border and Meranese sits around Merano. The village of Tramin, Termeno on the Italian side of the label, gave its name to Gewürztraminer.
A February 2010 newsletter on the monastic cellars of the region profiled the Augustinian house at Varna, described there as the oldest winery in the world in continuous production. Its list — Sylvaner, Müller-Thurgau, Gewürztraminer, Kerner, Pinot Grigio and Veltliner — is a fair summary of what the cool upper valleys grow.
The reds nobody expects
Schiava, Vernatsch in German, is the historic red: pale, light, sharply drinkable and in retreat for decades as growers replanted to white varieties. Lagrein is the other, dark and firm, grown mainly on warm alluvial ground at Gries on the edge of Bolzano. The same 2010 newsletter recorded that Lagrein flourishes in the scorching summer heat around the city, which is not how anyone pictures an alpine region.
An August 2010 profile of a Santa Maddalena grower covered an estate of two and a half hectares plus leased land, whose owner was best known for Lagrein. Holdings of that size are the norm here, not an eccentricity.
Trentino: Teroldego and the bottle-fermented half
Trentino’s structure is different — larger estates, more private ownership, and a sparkling industry of real weight. Its signature red is Teroldego, grown almost entirely on the Campo Rotaliano, the flat gravel fan the Noce river laid down where it joins the Adige. Teroldego Rotaliano DOC is effectively the only place it is made in quantity.
Marzemino and Nosiola are the other natives, the second of them also dried for the sweet Vino Santo Trentino. A June 2014 newsletter on the northeast noted that the Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige and Friuli-Venezia Giulia look like one geographical unit on a map, then spent the rest of the piece on how little the three actually share.
Trento DOC
Trento DOC is metodo classico sparkling wine from Chardonnay, Pinot Nero, Pinot Bianco and Pinot Meunier grown at altitude. The minimum is 15 months on the lees for a non-vintage wine, 24 months for a vintage bottling and 36 for a Riserva. Those are longer floors than most drinkers assume, and they are why these wines carry weight.
It is Italy’s other bottle-fermented appellation of consequence, and the comparison worth making is with Franciacorta in the Lombardy wine region guide. An October 2012 newsletter on the journey north described two friends who inherited a vineyard in the alpine village of Faedo and built a business on ground nobody had tested.
| Trait | Alto Adige / Südtirol | Trentino |
|---|---|---|
| Province | Bolzano | Trento |
| First language | German | Italian |
| Who makes the wine | Cooperatives, close to 70 percent | Private estates and large houses |
| Signature whites | Pinot Bianco, Gewürztraminer, Kerner | Chardonnay, Nosiola |
| Signature reds | Schiava, Lagrein | Teroldego, Marzemino |
| Sparkling | Minor | Trento DOC, metodo classico |
| Named subzones | Seven inside the DOC | None comparable |
What a Trentino-Alto Adige wine region guide should say about labels
The practical problem in a shop is that a single wine can have two names. Labels from Bolzano province appear in German, in Italian, or in both, and the pairs are not always guessable from the spelling.
- Alto Adige — Südtirol
- Schiava — Vernatsch
- Lago di Caldaro — Kalterersee
- Pinot Bianco — Weissburgunder
- Pinot Nero — Blauburgunder
- Valle Isarco — Eisacktaler
- Val Venosta — Vinschgau
Trentino labels are Italian only. If there is German on a bottle from this region, it came from north of Salorno, which tells you a fair amount about how it was farmed.
At the table
The regional cooking is alpine — speck, rye bread, dumplings, cured pork, mountain cheese — and the wines grew up beside it. Schiava with speck is the local reflex and it is difficult to improve on. Pinot Bianco and Kerner take river fish and anything finished with butter.
Gewürztraminer is worth holding back for strong cheese or a spiced dish rather than pouring it first. Lagrein and Teroldego both handle roast meat, and Trento DOC works at the start of a meal or straight through it. The whites here have far more in common with Friuli’s hillside bottles than with anything grown south of the Po.
Trentino-Alto Adige FAQ
Is Alto Adige the same place as South Tyrol?
Yes. Alto Adige is the Italian name and Südtirol the German one for the province of Bolzano, which was part of Austria-Hungary until the end of the First World War. Both names are legal on a wine label and producers use whichever suits the market.
Why are the cooperatives taken seriously here?
Because they were never built to absorb surplus. Growers own tiny parcels on steep ground, so the cooperative was the only route to a finished wine, and the good ones pay their members on quality rather than tonnage.
What is Trentodoc?
It is the trade name used for Trento DOC, the region’s traditional-method sparkling appellation. The wine is fermented a second time in the bottle and held on its lees for at least 15 months, longer for vintage and Riserva bottlings. It is not a Prosecco-style tank-fermented wine.
Is Schiava worth seeking out?
If you want a light, chilled red with genuine local character, yes — it is one of the few pale reds in Italy made seriously rather than as an afterthought. Plantings have shrunk a great deal, so the surviving vineyards tend to be the old ones. The Italian wine regions hub places it against the rest of the country’s reds.