Friuli-Venezia Giulia occupies the north-east against Slovenia, and its reputation is built almost entirely on white wine. The key zones are Collio and the Colli Orientali del Friuli, both hillside appellations on ponca — a marl-and-sandstone soil that drains hard and stresses the vine productively — with Friuli Isonzo on the plain below.
The signature grape is Friulano, known as Tocai Friulano until a European ruling over the Hungarian name forced the change in 2007. It gives a dry white with a distinctive bitter-almond finish. Ribolla Gialla is the other native of note, lean and citric, and the region also makes some of Italy's most convincing Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon.
Friuli's largest influence on modern wine came from Oslavia, on the Slovenian border, where from the 1990s producers such as Gravner and Radikon returned to fermenting white grapes on their skins for weeks or months, often in buried amphorae. The results — deep amber, tannic, oxidative — became the template for what the English-speaking world now calls orange wine.
Reds exist and deserve more attention than they get: Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso, dark and sharply acidic, and Schioppettino, peppery and aromatic, both nearly lost and both revived within living memory.
