Under market pressure, Umbria’s most important red-wine denomination is seeking to reinvent itself by making less tannic, more elegant wines from its signature grape variety, Sagrantino. Montefalco vineyards and olive groves are pictured above.
A trend for lighter wines, which goes hand in hand with a global decline in wine consumption (especially red), has several Italian wine regions grappling with changing market demand. Simply producing ‘lighter’ wines is not always an option, because certain styles, such as Amarone (which, due to reduced global demand, bottled 17% less in 2023 than in the previous year), have strict production methods enshrined by...