Teroldego

On the flat gravel plain of the Campo Rotaliano, in the far north of Italy, Teroldego makes a deeply coloured, brambly, alpine-fresh red that André Tchelistcheff once called one of Italy's finest. It is a grape of the cold Adige valley, half-sibling to Syrah and parent to the local Lagrein — a small, tight-knit family of the Alps.

Cropped high on the fertile flats it makes an easy, juicy everyday red; pruned hard by the region's ambitious growers it gives something far more serious — dark, peppery, mineral and ageworthy. Little known abroad, it is one of northern Italy's most distinctive and improvable natives.