Massifitti

Massifitti is Suavia's case for Trebbiano di Soave, an all-but-forgotten Veneto grape the Tessari family set out to rescue: genetically Verdicchio, and a world away from the workaday Trebbiano Toscano it gets confused with. The name joins the Fittà cru to its 'massi fitti', the dense basalt boulders lodged in the soil. The two-hectare plot faces south at 300 metres, replanted in 2006 from old-vine clones selected in a recovery project with the University of Milan; farming is certified organic.

Fermentation runs in stainless steel on native yeasts, cool and slow, with no malolactic to keep the acidity taut. It then rests fifteen months on the fine lees in steel, no oak at any point, then a year in bottle before release. Bottled as an IGT rather than a Soave DOC, since a pure Trebbiano di Soave falls outside the appellation's rules, and made in tiny quantity, up from a couple of thousand bottles at its 2008 debut to around twenty thousand today.