On the flat gravel plain of the Campo Rotaliano, in Italy's alpine far north, Teroldego makes a deeply coloured, brambly, mountain-fresh red that the great winemaker André Tchelistcheff once called one of Italy's finest. A relative of Syrah and parent of Lagrein, it is one of the peninsula's most distinctive native reds.
Cropped high on the fertile flats it makes easy, juicy wine; pruned hard by the region's ambitious growers — Elisabetta Foradori foremost among them — it gives something dark, peppery, mineral and ageworthy. Little known abroad, it is one of northern Italy's most improvable grapes.