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Everyone Should Have One Talent. What’s Yours, Trebbiano? Or Should I Call You...Ugni
Blanc?
Patricia Highsmith’s amoral literary creation Tom Ripley had his talents: telling lies, forging signatures, and impersonating almost anybody. Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc has its own talent as well: in this case, producing tons and tons of grapes from a single vines that can be crafted into sharply acidic wines. And while Tom’s talents only got him so far until he convinced a wealthy businessman that he’d gone to Princeton with his son Dickie, Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc found itself in the same meager rut – seen as
nothing more than an unremarkable country wine until it began to rub up against high society. Once they both got that taste of how the elite lived, then and only then did Mr. Ripley and Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc truly realize what their lives’ destinies were to be.
For Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc (treb-ee-YANO/oo-NEE BLAHNK; Trebbiano is the Italian name for the grape, Ugni Blanc the French name), that destiny was becoming the primary grape used in the production of Cognac and Armagnac, two of the most prestigious and expensive spirits in the world (and a favorite to Tupac, Jay-Z, and hundreds of other hip-hop stars around the globe). The Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc grapes existed long before brandy distillation was first discovered (and if you’re not familiar with the distillation of brandy or its Cognac or Armagnac forms, we’ve got a primer for you down below), but were perceived as lesser grapes that produced only average wines, wines that were considered too acidic and not structured enough for single varietal wines. In most cases, Trebbiano and Ugni Blanc grapes were often blended with other slightly less acidic grapes from the same region. For Ugni Blanc, it was Colombard and Folle Blanc; for Trebbiano, it was Malvasia Bianca. Some producers, most notably in Italy, did make single-varietal Trebbianos (there are six DOC designated regions in Italy that produce single varietal Trebbiano, although the grape is used in blends in over 80 different DOCs), but despite being the most widely-planted grapes in both countries, finding a single-varietal expression of the grape became as hard as trying to find the good in Tom Ripley.
That all changed, though, in the mid-1600’s when a group of Dutch merchant settlers wandered down into southwestern France looking for goods to trade and decided to take some of the local wine back for the long journey home. The problem was, the settlers knew the wine wouldn’t keep during the entire journey and this being part of wine’s pre-bottle era, lugging an entire barrel or cask back was nigh impossible. To solve the dilemma, the Dutch decided to distill the wines, which would give them exponential life; they soon discovered that the best wines to distill, which would produce the smoothest tasting by-product (soon to be called “eau-du-vie”) were the wines with higher acids and lower alcohol contents.
Enter Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc.
The grape was a perfect match for distillation, and soon the locals in this region of France discovered that if the eau-du-vie produced underwent a second distillation, it produced an even smoother, higher quality spirit. And so Cognac was born in the town of...Cognac (for more on the Cognac making process and rules governing production in the region, see the primer below.)
But this isn’t Forgotten Spirits or Forgotten Liquor, this is Forgotten Grapes, and the problem with Trebbiano and Ugni Blanc’s rags-to-riches rise in the world of brandy was that the still white wines produced from the grapes got lost in the shuffle. Well no more. That’s why we’re here. Not much has changed since the pre-Cognac early 1600s – the quality may have risen but the grape has not changed its skin. Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc still produces wines with high acidity, lower alcohol, and clear, fresh, bright, sharp citrus scents and flavors. They are wines that pair nicely with the fresh vegetables and seafood of the neighboring Atlantic and Adriatic. And the grapes still remain the most prevalent
in two of the hearts of Old World winemaking. If you’ve never experienced a VSOP or XO snifter of Cognac or Armagnac in your life, you owe it to yourself to try one, and if
you’ve never tried a glass of Trebbiano or Ugni Blanc in your life, you owe it to
yourself to try one as well. If you call yourself a true Friend of the Forgotten Grape.
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What It Looks Like, What It Smells Like, and What It Tastes Like
Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc looks like:
Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc smells like:
Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc tastes like:
Remember Sprite’s old commercials where they claimed their soft drink had the power of “Lymon”? Well, Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc wines are tremendously full of Lymon. Also Lirange and Lempricot. As one might expect from a grape known for producing sharp, tart, acidic wines, most Trebbianos/Ugni Blancs have strong aromas of citrus fruit – lemon, lime, Mandarin orange. These scents might also drift into the softer realm of stone fruits such as apricots and peaches, but of the unripened variety, where they still have a stronger, sharper flavor. But expect bright, clean lemon-limey citrus scents the minute you pop open the can, er, I mean uncork the bottle.
Hmmm, a grape that produces bright, sharp, clean acidic wines with lots of unripened and citrus fruit on the nose? I wonder what that is going to taste like? I wonder what flavors will be present in my mouth when I take my first sip? I wonder...I wonder...Here’s a hint in case you haven’t figured it out yet – it’s citrus. Yep, those same lemon, lime, and orange flavors will be there on the palate just like they were on the nose. Normally the flavors should be bright and clean in regard to the citrus, but occasionally you may get a trace of a darker bitterness, akin to the rind of a lemon, lime, orange, or even a watermelon. And there are those Trebbianos that will have a bit more residual sugar, so occasionally in some bottles you’ll get a slight sweetness to the wine in. But that is typically a rarity. You want an acidic wine, you’ve got it in Trebbiano/Ugni Blanc!
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• In case you’re unfamiliar with Cognac or Armagnac, here’s a short primer how on these particular spirits are produced. Cognac and Armagnac are both types of brandy, a spirit produced by distilling wine. Cognac and Armagnac are two of only three officially demarcated brandy-producing regions in the world, the third being the town of Jerez, Spain, where they primarily make sherry-style brandy. The town and region of Cognac lies just north of the Bordeaux wine region, in the Charentes-Maritime department of France, along the right bank of the Gironde estuary; Armagnac lies to the southeast of Bordeaux, halfway between the towns of Bordeaux and Toulouse. To be a true Cognac, the spirit must not only be produced in the region from grapes grown in the region, but 90% of the grapes used must be either Ugni Blanc, Colombard, or Folle Blanc (though Ugni Blanc is almost exclusively used in this day and age), the spirit must be distilled twice in copper pot stills called alembics, and the spirit must be aged for a minimum of two years in Limousin oak from the Limoges region of France. Armagnacs are only distilled once and allow any percentage of ten different grapes to be used in the production, though again, Ugni Blanc is still the preferred grape.
To make Cognac, Armagnac, or any brandy for that matter, you must start with a white wine possessing a lower than normal alcohol content (typically 8-12% ABV) and a high acidity, hence the reason Ugni Blanc is the preferred grape in Cognac and Armagnac. The wine is distilled in either a traditional column still for Armagnac and other brandies or the aforementioned copper alembic for Cognac, and the resulting by-product is a spirit called eau-du-vie (French for “water of life”) and is sometimes bottled on its own without aging. Germans refer to eau-du-vie as Schnapps and often distill them from fruit wines. In Armagnac and other regions, the eaux-du-vie is then aged in oak barrels to soften the alcohol and add sweetness and structure to the spirit. In Cognac, though, the eaux–du-vie are then distilled once more before they are aged in new oak for the two-year minimum. This makes Cognacs smoother and more complex than Armagnacs and other brandies. Most brandies have an ABV between 36% and 60% depending on the amount of time they age (alcohol will evaporate naturally from the spirit during aging). Cognacs and Armagnacs are then classified based on their aging as VS (Very Special – minimum 2 years aging), VSOP (Very Special Old Pale – minimum 4 years aging), and XO (Extra Old – minimum 6 years but typically 20 or more); there are also other levels and designations that exists between these primary categories, such as Napoleon and Vieux.
• Though Ugni Blanc is the most widely-planted grape in France and Trebbiano is the most widely-planted grape in Italy, the grape itself is indigenous to Italy. It accounts for over a third of all white wine produced in Italy, and although the grape is used in blends in 80 different DOCs (appellation designations in Italy), single varietal Trebbiano has just six DOCs to itself. The most prolific of these DOCs and the one you’re most likely to find in your local wine shop is Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, which is produced in the Abruzzo region of Italy, 50 miles east of Rome on the Adriatic Sea. The Trebbiano grape is also well-known as the primary grape in the popular Orvieto white wine blend produced in Umbria. Finding a 100% Ugni Blanc, on the other hand, is nearly impossible, despite
the prodigious amount of the grape that is grown. We’ll tell you more about that
below.
Fun Facts to Impress/Bore People At Parties
From Brein’s Brain to Your Plate
“Typically Trebbianos, Ugni Blancs – whatever you want to call them; I’ll stick with Ugni Blanc, because French is what I know – are pretty good wines to pair with food, because the high acid in the wine will bring out a lot of flavors. You just have to be careful it’s a bold flavored food, because all of that acid without a lot of balance will really overpower whatever the wine is paired with. So because of the sharp citrus in the wine and because it can be Sauvignon Blanc-y, I’d try an Ugni Blanc with a grapefruit and arugula salad. The citrus match is obvious, but the bitterness in the arugula should counter the wine nicely and provide a little bit of structure to the whole thing.”
“Because of its piquancy, I actually think goat cheese is a perfect match with an Ugni Blanc. It’s a traditionally French ingredient, so you get that, if you’re using a nice strong, chalky picodan or chevre, and the sharpness of the cheese is really going to match up well to the wine. But I’d take it even a step further and add in either some fig compote or maybe just some straight figs right off the tree. The sweetness and slight earthiness of the fig is really going to balance out the higher acidities of the wine and cheese, and I think all of those flavors are going to mesh extraordinarily well into something that’s going to taste super yummy.”
“Alright, normally with a really acidic white wine, you want to do something with either seafood or vegetables or both. Oysters would go really, really well with this wine, but that’s probably too easy, and we hit the vegetables with the salad above. So let’s combine the two and do a whole grilled fish stuffed with vegetables. Since Ugni Blanc is a western French grape, you probably want a cold-water Atlantic fish, like a striped bass or a snapper. Slice it open, clean and de-bone it, then stuff the inside of the fish with fennel, celery, onions, and some lemon slices. Throw that on a grill until the skin gets nice and charred and crispy, then open it up and enjoy all of that succulent fish inside. Now that’s going to team up with an Ugni
Blanc wine really excellently. That should be awesome together.”
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Chef Brein Clements is the chef/owner of Restaurant Omakase in Riverside, CA, which
is quickly becoming SoCal’s answer to El Bulli. Minus the molecular gastronomy. He
began his cooking career at Domaine Chandon in the Napa Valley and moved on to become
Chef de Cuisine at the famed Balboa Bay Club before opening his own restaurant. Plus
he’s only 28. My man knows his wine and he knows his food. Each week he’ll provide
ingredient and dish recommendations that match up well with the week’s forgotten
grape. You should heed what he says. No, seriously, heed it.
2008 Vallevo Trebbiano D’Abruzzo
This particular Trebbiano stood out from the others in the fact that its flavors
were slightly less citrus and more like ripening stone fruit. One member of our Tasting
Squadron likened the nose of the wine to walking through a ripening peach orchard.
So free-hanging peaches on the nose, along with some lime scents as well. It was
a very clean and fresh wine with lots of lime and orange flavors, though it did start
out with some darker rind-y flavors at the very front of the palate. We were definitely
amused by this wine, though; unfortunately, we also discovered that it must be quite
popular – we picked up this bottle at The Wine House in Los Angeles, but when we
went to their website to find it again, it was nowhere to be seen. No bother though;
we’ve heard it’s available at lots of other wine stores, and it appears The Wine
House has a few other Trebbiano selections to tide you over until this one returns.
2006 Vestini Trebbiano D’Abruzzo
And now for something completely different. Okay, not really, but this wine did look
different from the other Trebbianos: a darker yellow color and murkier, belying the
extra age on this particular wine. It appeared to be a little more unrefined than
the other wines we tried, with bolder acid and less smoothness and structure, and
a lot more lemon scents on the nose. In fact, it almost dipped into the scent of
watermelon rind at certain instances. Flavor-wise, though, the wine came off as completely
contrary to what the aroma had hinted at. There was a slight sweetness to this wine,
and it had much more structure and balance than initially suspected. It was not nearly
as acidic as expected, and the fresh lemon flavors came off more like a Meyer lemon
meringue pie when coupled with that little bit of sweetness in the wine, but a really
good lemon meringue pie where the lemon part is nice and tart and not too sugary.
Again, a wine that we really, really enjoyed and one that can be opened up to a wider
variety of foods because of that touch of sweetness. Liquorama was having a sale
on these when we got ours (Buy one, second one for a penny – yes please!), but we
suspect that was one of those in-store-only deals. However, this wine is still a
steal for the price, so definitely check it out. (Note: apparently Liquorama’s website
is all frames now, so you’ll have to search for “Trebbiano” to find this wine.)
Our Friend of the Forgotten Grapes Tasting Squadron tastes all of the wines you see
here ahead of time to ensure that you aren’t getting anything rotten or clunky. We
also try to ensure that most of the wines highlighted here are affordably priced
($20 or less) so you can try them out for yourself without having to take out a second
mortgage or sacrificing your kid (or future kid’s) college fund to do so. Lastly,
the Friends of the Forgotten Grapes has relationships with all the fine wine purveyors
we link to in this section. We know them, we trust them. You can order these wines
from them online right now and be trying them out in the next couple of days. Do
yourself a favor and order from them by using the links below. It’s totally worth
it. And tell them that ForgottenGrapes.com sent you, too.
Whether Ugni Blanc from France or Trebbiano from Italy, the wines typically have a bright, fresh, lemon chiffon yellow color to them. Since they are not fermented or aged in any oak, it should be a light, bright, translucent yellow color, slightly paler in some bottles than others, but generally with a yellow hue that falls in between a Napa Chardonnay and a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. If you remember our discussion of Semillon from earlier in the year, it’s not too far off from that, color-wise.
2007 Domaine du Tariquet Cotes de Gascogne Ugni Blanc/Colombard
You may remember up above where we pointed out that you rarely if ever find a 100%
Ugni Blanc varietal wine. Well, that is completely the case. Because we didn’t want
to do another Trebbiano and we wanted to see if there was any difference between
an Italian Trebbiano and a French Ugni Blanc wine, we searched high and low for an
Ugni, and after many days of research, we discovered that this was as close as we
were going to get. So even though we don’t typically do varietal blends here at Forgotten
Grapes, we’re making an exception this time because it’s all we could get.
So this wine comes from the Gascony area of France, which just happens to be the
home of Armagnac, so of course they grow Ugni Blanc there. They also grow Colombard,
another grape used in Cognac and Armagnac production, and it is these two grapes
you most often find blended together if you are finding Ugni Blanc at all. The Colombard
grape is, like Ugni Blanc, naturally acidic, but less so than the Ugni, so it can
provide more structure to the wine. Most Ugni-Colombard blends are produced as Vin
de Pays from the Cotes de Gascogne region, as this one is. The blend on this is 70%
Ugni Blanc, 30% Colombard, and the Colombard gives the wine an interesting, slightly
perfumed smell in addition to the clean, bright acidity and citrus. We got ruby grapefruit
flavors on this wine, with super, super sour citrus and a whole lot of acidity goin’
on in there. Someone noted pineapple with jasmine, which seems like a lovely description
and works here also. This would really go well with raw seafood, especially freshly
shucked oysters. We got our bottle at Napacabs.com and you should too. Just so you
can tell people you
drink Ugni Blanc, which is just a fun wine to say...
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Go On. Try It. You’ll Like It. 
