White grape

Fiano

Parentage — Ancient Campanian variety — plausibly Rome's vitis apiana, 'the bees' vine'

  • hazelnut
  • pear
  • honey
  • smoke
  • dried herbs
Budbreak
Mid-season
Maturity
Late; October in the hills of Avellino
Leaf
Medium, orbicular, three- to five-lobed
Bunch
Small to medium, pyramidal, fairly compact
Berry
Small, slightly oval, golden-yellow; thick skin over dense, sweet flesh

Antiquity's white survivor. Fiano is plausibly the apianum of the Roman authors — the "bees' grape", its flesh so sweet the hives besieged the harvest — and its name and home have scarcely moved in two millennia: the hills of Campania, above all around Avellino.

Its low yields nearly killed it. In the twentieth century growers abandoned it wholesale for more productive vines, and it survived in the hazelnut hills of Irpinia as scattered old plots until a handful of houses replanted it in earnest. Modern Fiano di Avellino justifies the rescue: hazelnut, pear, honey and a thread of smoke over a mineral spine — one of the few whites of southern Italy that genuinely improves across a decade in bottle.

In the blend

Share of this grape in a typical blend of each wine

Where it grows

Share of the region's vineyard planted with this grape

Through time

Indicative presence index, 0–100Origins & Antiquity — 35The Monastic Middle Ages — 20Exploration & the Fortified Age — 10Classifications & the Golden Age — 10Phylloxera & the World Crises — 15The Modern & New World Era — 45Antiquity35500150017001875195045