The Wine Pair Podcast

Italian Wine Adventure #17: Ribolla Gialla!

• The Wine Pair • Season 1 • Episode 173

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A favorite wine of sommeliers, Ribolla Gialla is just different. Hailing from the beautiful Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy, this wine even made it into the seminal and historically significant literary work The Decameron where the poet Giovanni Boccaccio listed Ribolla as one of the sources of the sin of gluttony. So that’s kind of fun. What makes it different is that it is a medium-bodied yet crisp white wine that can be made into a wide variety of styles - including orange wine, sparkling wine, and, what we tasted and reviewed in this episode - a still dry wine. In a tale that is all too common, we nearly lost Ribolla Gialla by the 1970s, but brave and intrepid winemakers in the region have been slowly but consistently bringing it back - which is great for all of us. Join us to learn more about the history of this wine, and what we think about the wines we tasted in this episode. Wines reviewed in this episode: 2023 Mario Schiopetto Ribolla Gialla, 2021 Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla

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Show Notes

Episode #173: Italian Wine Adventure #17: Ribolla Gialla! 00:00

Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair! 

If you are new to our podcast, here is what you can expect. If you love wine and want to find great wines at affordable prices, and you want to expand your wine horizons, and you want to have some fun and maybe even laugh while doing it - then you are in the right place! Each week we explore a different wine varietal, style, brand, or region of the winemaking world, and learn about what makes them worth knowing about. And then we taste 2-3 of those wines that are reasonably priced to let you know if they are worth your hard earned money. If that feels like something that you would dig, then we are super happy you are here. And, we are proud to say that Decanter Magazine calls us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining.

Carmela, this is our last episode before we head out on our trip to Italy, so what else would we do but take on a wine from Italy and do an Italian wine adventure? The wine we are going to be learning about today is called Ribolla Gialla. Now, this is not a wine that comes from the areas of Italy we are going to on this trip, in fact, it is pretty far away from them, however, it is an Italian wine, and it’s supposed to be a great wine, and it may be one that we see on our travels. If nothing else, it gets us psyched up!

In case you are curious about where we are going on our trip, here is the scoop. We are going to see my side of the family, specifically my dad’s mom’s side, in Naples where my cousin Alfonso lives, and then to a tiny little town called Serra Pedace in Calabria, and then another city called Catanzaro where Alfonso’s mom Rosetta lives. 

Fun fact, if you know about Washington wines, then you probably know about Leonetti Cellars. They make some of the most expensive and hardest to find wines in the US. It turns out that my grandmother’s maiden name on my dad’s side was Leonetti, and Leonetti Cellars has a vineyard called Serra Pedace, and it is named after the place where the parents of Gary Figgins came from, and they were named Francesco and Rosa Leonetti. Yes, we are related, distant cousins, and, again, the town of Serra Pedace in Calabria is teeny tiny. It is about 1,000 people, and yes, I still have cousins who live there that we are going to visit, and I am thrilled! But kind of cool that somehow, over thousands and thousands of miles and over a hundred years, there are those kinds of connections. 

Carmela, do you want to talk about the family we are visiting on your side really quickly, and if there are any connections to wine?

Before we jump into Ribolla Gialla, I did want to mention a few wines we may run into on our trip that are from the areas we are visiting:

  • In Naples, which is in the province of Campania, we should run into the red wine Aglianico, which was actually the subject of our very first Italian Wine Adventure episode, as well as the white wines Falanghina and Greco di Tufo. We need to do an episode on Falanghina, but we did recently do one on Greco di Tufo!
  • In Catanzaro, which is in Calabria, we should run into the red wine Gaglioppo which is the core of the Calabrian wine Cirò which we did an episode about, as well as the white wine Greco Bianco, which you would find in Cirò white wine.
  • In Bari, which is in Puglia, and actually we are staying in the town Polignano a Mare, we should run into the red wine Primitivo, which is the same as Zinfandel, which we have not done an episode on yet but should, as well as Fiano di Puglia and Bombino Bianco. Now, we did do an episode on Fiano in the past, but that came from Campania, so we may run into it in both places. 


We’ll share photos of our trip, and we’ll likely put some in our newsletter which, by the way, will be late next month - we usually do it on the first of the month, but I ain’t putting it together on our trip, and hopefully we’ll have some awesome wine stories to share as well as awesome family stories.

But we have digressed a ton, and we need to get back to Ribolla Gialla which is the wine we are supposed to be talking about today. Ribolla Gialla is typically a still, dry white wine, but it is increasingly being used in sparkling wines, as well as orange wines. We are not doing orange wines today, but we will bring them back in the future because listeners have asked, but an orange wine is a white wine made from, obviously, white wine grapes that has been in contact with the skins, sometimes for a few hours, and sometimes for much much longer. 

Think of orange wine as the cousin of Rosé wine, and in a Rosé wine, the juice has been in contact with the skins of the red wine grapes it is made from for a short period of time. For another reminder, the color for red wine and orange wines and Rosé wines comes from the skins. Except in rare circumstances, with grapes called Teinturiers, even the juice that comes from red wine grapes is clear. BTW, we have an episode from a couple of years ago on orange wines as well as a minisode you can check out if you want to know more. 

So let’s learn more about what Ribolla Gialla wine is and what makes it worth knowing about, and we have two Ribolla Gialla wines that we are going to taste and review today to let you know if they are worth seeking out . . . 

But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.

Thank you for listening to us and for supporting our show, and if you haven’t  had the chance to do so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast and leave us a nice rating and review  to help us grow our listeners - and a huge thank you to all of you who have subscribed already! 

You can also follow us on Instagram at thewinepairpodcast, and on Bluesky. You can contact us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com, and you can sign up for our email newsletter there and you can also visit our “Shop Wine” and “Shop Accessories” sections where you can find links to buy the wines that we rate as buys in each episode and accessories we think are great choices for wine lovers and as gifts, too. 

And we want to make content you care about and you like, so send us a note or DM us and give us some feedback or let us know if there are wines you want us to try or wine making areas of the world you are curious about - and we’ll take care of it! joe@thewinepairpodcast.com
A few shoutouts this week

  • Timmysvino! He is back off the shitlist, and sent us a horrifying yet intriguing description of an experience with retsina, the Greek wine with resin in it that we mentioned last week. He dared us to do an episode on it. Maybe we should. But, Timmy, the pressure is off. We won’t shame you anymore
  • I also missed a shoutout to Shekar last week who reached out to us to let us know he liked the Chateauneuf-du-pape episode and said that is probably his favorite French wine, and to say he agreed with us in our newsletter that there is grade inflation from wine reviewers like sucky James Suckling.


Just a little reminder that we will be serving up some minisodes and an interview for the next several weeks because we will be traveling to Italy and heading to Portland to see our son in The Winter’s Tale who is playing the lead character Leontes, the king of Sicily, in Oregon Adventure Theater’s production, so just a PSA for you.  

And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should recommend The Wine Pair Podcast to - because the best way for us to grow listeners is when you tell your family and friends about us - and this week, we want you to recommend us to anyone, who, like us is heading to Italy and wants to know more about Italian wine because they may enjoy this episode, or our other Italian Wine Adventures!


RESEARCH ARTICLES AND LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE


Topic: WTF is Ribolla Gialla wine? 11:43

Ok, Carmela, let’s find out just what the eff Ribolla Gialla wine is. Shall we?

First, of all, the wine is best known from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia area of northeast Italy. This is that area of Italy that people forget actually sneaks a bit around the Adriatic sea and along the coast, bordering Slovenia. And, Ribolla Gialla is found in Slovenia where it is known as Rebula. So, same wine.

Specifically, there are four main DOCs or legally designated areas where it is grown, namely the Collio DOC, Colli Orientali del Friuli DOC, DOC Isonzo, and DOCG Rosazzo. For those of you keeping score at home, those are all in the very eastern part of the province, very close to Slovenia, and, if you are an Italian soccer fan, near the city of Udine where the team Udinese Calcio is from. 

Like a lot of the wines and grapes from this part of the world, these are ancient grapes, as you might expect, Carmela. The origins are not exactly clear, but they are likely several thousands of years old. The grape is now considered indigenous to the Friuli Collio/Goriska Brda region. There are references to the wine dating back to the Middle Ages, and the first written records of the grape come from 1289. The powerful Venetian kings were said to be fans of the wine. 

On an interesting side note, Carmela, the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio, most famous for The Decameron which is a 14th century collection of stories of ten people who flee Florence to escape the Black Death, which is not a super fun topic but a very famous literary work. He actually listed indulgence of Ribolla wines as one of the sins of gluttony, gluttony being one of the seven deadly sins. So, there you go. This is why we love learning about wine - it connects to history, geography, culture, and cuisine. And the Black Death and Deadly Sins, I guess. 

Originally, Ribolla wines were mainly sweet, which is interesting, because now it is mostly known as a dry white wine - and this is interesting, Carmela, because I was reading about this today, but wines today are much less sweet than they were in the past, in large part because we use yeasts now that can handle higher alcohol before they die. 

During the phylloxera epidemic of the 19th century, Ribolla was hit very hard, and many vineyard owners decided to plant other grapes instead. And so, this is a common tale we hear about a lot of indigenous grapes, Ribolla was nearly extinct by the 1970s. As recently as the 1990s, less than 1% of the wines in the Friuli area under DOC designations even contained Ribolla. But, the good news is that it has made a comeback. Hooray for us!

In another common tale which we talk about on this podcast, Carmela, a lot of the comeback was due to local winemakers becoming interested in reviving indigenous grapes, and around 1990 Ribolla started making a slow recovery which really accelerated in the early 2000’s as even more wineries started to rediscover the wine and plant a higher volume of the grapes. Today, 11% of the vineyards in the Collio region are Ribolla Gialla, up from just 1% not so long ago.

There were also some other factors that led to this revival of Ribolla Gialla. Are you curious to learn about them?

  • First, in the late 1970’s, some winemakers started to make sparkling wines from the grape, which is said to be well suited to sparkling wine. And we like sparkling
  • Second, winemakers in the area started bringing back traditional methods of winemaking, including extended skin contact, which today we call orange wine, which is becoming more and more popular, and indigenous yeasts.
  • Third, Sommeliers started to get really interested in the wine because not only was it unique, it was a relatively inexpensive option for a very good and very interesting wine. Sommeliers like to help their customers learn something new - amiright?!? - and so this is a fun wine to introduce to people, especially if all they drink is fucking Chardonnay. Am I also right?!?


So, Ribolla Gialla has been really helped by local winemakers refusing to let the wine die, and by brave winemakers who have been willing to not just stay on the safe path in how they make their wine.

On a final note, some have compared this wine to Sauvignon Blanc, so we need to find out if that is true.

So, this feels like a great time to learn a little more about the specific wines we are drinking today. Whaddya say?


Ribolla Gialla Wines We Chose for This Episode 19:34

As usual, both of the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $25, and at least one of them should be relatively easy to find because I bought it at wine.com, and the other I bought at a local wine shop that we like here in Seattle called Esquin / Mad Wine. As we usually say, you can find these wines or similar wines at your local wine shop, especially if they have a good Italian wine section, and if they don’t, just ask the proprietor to get one for you because they would be happy to. 

The first wine we are going to drink today is the 2023 Mario Schiopetto Ribolla Gialla. This one is designated as an IGT wine, which you may find on some bottles of Italian wine. IGT is similar to the DOC and DOCG classifications, but is a little less restrictive. It stands for Indicazione Geografica Tipica, and you can translate that to mean that this is a wine made in a specific geographical region, but the winemakers have more flexibility in how they make the wine than those who have a DOC or DOCG designation. We have mentioned this before, but some of the great wines of Italy, the Super Tuscans which are more like Bordeaux wines, are IGT, so it does not mean these are not great wines. 

There was some decent information about how this wine is made. The vines are trained in the Guyot bilateral system, or the double Guyot which we have talked about in the past. It means the vines are spread out from the trunk left and right. The grapes were hand harvested in September, fermented and stored for 8 months in stainless steel, with at least two months in the bottle.

For a little information on the winery, Mario Schiopetto is located in the hills of Capriva del Friuli, and they have been making wine since 1965. Today, his children Maria Angela, Carlo and Giorgio run the winery, and they have won many awards and are a well-regarded winery. We won’t hold it against them, but James “sucky” Suckling gave them a 92 rating for this vintage. 

The second wine we are going to review is the 2021 Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla, and this one received a 90 rating from Wine Enthusiast and a 92 from Falstaff which is a wine reviewing magazine from Austria, and also the name of a famous character in Shakespeare plays who liked to drink. 

The Cantina Puaitti is also an IGT wine, and is also made from 100% Ribolla Gialla. The vines are also trained in the Double Guyot system, and the wine is aged in stainless steel tanks for 4 months, but I found it difficult to find exact information for this particular vintage.

The Puiatti winery has been making wine since 1967, and they do not oak their wine, they also do not let the grapes over-ripen, they do not inoculate with non native yeast, and they don’t let their wines oxidize. I expect this wine to be super crisp and clean. They want you to taste the fruit, not any oak, so we really like their approach. 

But, not a ton else to tell you about this wine, so let’s get to drinking! We’ll take a quick break and be right back. And, if you have these wines or similar wines, drink along with us to get some participation points, which you can trade-in for free stickers. You just need to send me an email with your mailing address, and I will get those “I drink with The Wine Pair Podcast” stickers over to you!



LINKS TO SOURCES FOR THESE SPECIFIC WINES



2023 Mario Schiopetto Ribolla Gialla, 2021 Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla Wine Tasting, Pairing, and Review 23:55

Wine: Schiopetto Ribolla Gialla
Region: Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Year: 2023
Price: $22.99
Retailer: Mad Wine / Esquin
Alcohol: 12.5%
Grapes: Ribolla Gialla
Professional Rating: JS 92, Vivino

What we tasted and smelled in this Schiopetto Ribolla Gialla:

  • Color: Light yellow, pear juice colored
  • On the nose: Pineapple, peach, smells fresh, seawater, seashell, a bit of airplane glue
  • In the mouth: Crisp, tart apple and pineapple juice on the front, lingering bitterness on the end - like orange peel or pith, a bit alcoholy, almost tastes like a brandy, medium body


Food to pair with this Schiopetto Ribolla Gialla: Spicy foods, Mexican spice - with cumin, arrabiata, fish tacos, charcuterie board, antipasti, good summer wine, sushi, chicken
 
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, with no half points, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it. 

Schiopetto Ribolla Gialla Wine Rating: 

  • Joe: 7/10
  • Carmela: 7/10


Wine: Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla (Click here to find this wine on wine.com. We may be compensated if you purchase)
Region: Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Year: 2021
Price: $24.97
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 12.5%
Grapes: Ribolla Gialla
Professional Rating: WE 90, Falstaff 92, Vivino

What we tasted and smelled in this Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla:

  • Color: Light yellow, almost creamy yellow, like ginger ale
  • On the nose: Peach, apricot, stone fruit, some bitterness, some sweetness and bitterness, a bit of airplane glue, saline water, a bit of pear, a little bit of tropical fruit
  • In the mouth: Tart yellow apple on the front, Lemonhead candy, steely - like you can taste the stainless steel, rock, seashell, medium-ish body


Food to pair with this Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla: Seafood wine, shellfish, shrimp, seafood salad, scallops, fish tacos, fish and chips, fried fish sandwich

Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla Wine Rating: 

  • Joe: 8/10
  • Carmela: 8/10


Which one of these are you finishing tonight?

  • Carmela: Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla
  • Joe: Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla



Taste profiles expected from Ribolla Gialla  36:23

  • General 
    • Typical aromas and flavors include floral notes, such as white flower aromas or elderflower and honeysuckle. They are often described as fruity, with citrusy notes like lemon, lemon zest, lime, or tangerine. Other fruit notes can include green apple, apple, pear, or a hint of peach. Herbal qualities, particularly thyme, are also mentioned, along with other delicate herbal scents.
    • Minerality is often present, sometimes described as steely and there can be a touch of bitterness, like eating a lemon peel
  • Schiopetto Ribolla Gialla
    • Winery: Fresh and nutty, its bouquet is characterized by aromas of field blooming flowers. The palate is also flowery with a long and refreshing acidity.
    • Superiore.DE: The Ribolla Gialla brings a beautiful exotic flavour to the glass with notes of lemon, honey, orange blossom and melon. Full-bodied and juicy, clear and pure.
  • Cantina Puiatti Ribolla Gialla
    • Winery: Brilliant straw-yellow color, typical nose of golden apple, gooseberry, aromatic herbs. Fresh, light palate, appealingly drinkable.
    • Wine Enthusiast: The moment you pour the wine, it is as if you are picking the freshest and ripest apple in an orchard. In between hints of apples, the wine offers freshly cut white flowers, sea breeze and gravel. The palate continues with pear, wildflower honey and a distinct minerality that adds nuance on the finish.



What is the verdict on Ribolla Gialla? 38:15
Would choose to have a glass if we were out, and we will be looking out for it in Italy. A fun and different wine, and we can see why sommeliers like to suggest it.


Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 39:02

Ok, so, Carmela, it’s time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast app - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.

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