Tucked between the Alps and the Adriatic on Italy's Slovenian border, Friuli is the country's white-wine laboratory — the region that, in the 1970s, taught Italy to make crisp, clean, aromatic dry whites, and that in the same hills gave birth to the amber "orange wine" revival decades later. Its ponca soils and cool nights give its whites a rare clarity and cut.
Pinot Grigio here is taken seriously, Sauvignon can be electric, and the native Friulano and Ribolla Gialla give the region its own voice. Straddling cultures and styles — sleek modern whites and skin-macerated ancients — it is one of Europe's most creative white-wine regions.