Nicola Biasi works in an unusual place for one of Italy’s most talented young enologists: the remote, apple-growing hills of Northern Italy’s Dolomite Mountains.
Here, at 3,000 feet, surrounded by the orchards, peaks and forests of Trentino’s Val di Non, Biasi is a Pied Piper on the cutting edge of disease-resistant hybrid grapevines.
Vine hybrids that cross established European varieties with vines used for American rootstock have been around for decades in Northern European countries. In recent years, they’ve been gaining ground across the continent, including wine giants France and Italy.
The appeal is obvious. Europe is moving towards more sustainable agriculture and organic farming. But climate change and higher temperatures are fueling the spread of vine-crippling fungal diseases such as downy mildew, which devastated the 2023 wine harvest in parts of Italy. Resistant vines promise healthy crops with far fewer fungicide treatments in the vineyards.
It’s a niche in which Biasi has a particular hallmark. He’s not just interested in the practicality of new varieties, but also in their potential for greatness.
“We have to work for quality, quality, quality,” says Biasi. Youthfully lean and soft-spoken at age 42, he has the intentness of someone who has bet his career on his vision.
“There is a lot to be done. People don’t want to drink wine because it’s sustainable,” he says. “They want to drink wine because it’s good. If it’s also sustainable, that is an added value.”
Since 2017, on this cold mountain perch, Biasi has produced Lilliputian quantities of a meticulously farmed and vinified white wine called Vin de La Neu (“Wine of the Snow” in local dialect). It’s made from Johanniter, a 1960s-era crossing of Riesling with a German hybrid developed for breeding.
Biasi’s vineyard, less than one acre in size, is tightly planted with head-trained vines cultivated for miniscule yields of fruit per plant.
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