2018 Ottella Le Creete Lugana DOC 750 ml

The only constant on our last trip through Italy was our unquenchable thirst for Lugana, the vibrant white wine responsible for pairing seamlessly with any aperitivo dish from Alto Adige to Calabria. This is our highly-recommended case-buy all-occasion white that will disappear faster than you think.

Le Creete stood out amongst 5,000 white wines at Italy’s top wine event. It possesses the stylistic similarities of the world’s great whites—the vivid mineral and floral Chardonnays from Chablis or the exceptionally dry, mineral, and crisp acidity of Sauvignon Blancs—yet pound-for-pound delivers a memorable experience in every sip, every time, at a far better price.

A Wine Enthusiast Editors’ Choice, Le Creete comes from the Lugana DOC in Lombardy, a region beginning at the southern end of Lake Garda set amidst castles and buildings from the Middle Ages, and easily one of the most beautiful places on planet Earth. Eons ago, a glacier carved out this unique valley in Northern Italy and created Lake Garda, and gifted the region with the white chalky-clay soils that today provide Lugana with its exceptional character and minerality.

The variety behind Ottella’s aromatic, lemon-kissed white is Verdicchio Bianco, a grape known locally as Turbiana in Lombardy, better known as Trebbiano di Lugana, and associated with the best age-worthy wines from the Marche.

We tasted Le Creete and were immediately mesmerized, and couldn’t agree more with Wine Enthusiast‘s glowing review: “Fragrant aromas of white flower, tropical fruit and citrus mingle together with crushed wild herb on the nose. The vibrant, focused palate shows an understated elegance…”

In 2018 the clay soils of the Le Creete vineyard, combined with the moderating influence of the region’s lakes, led to perfectly ripe white grapes. The Ottella team slowly hand-picked this vineyard in several passes during late September and early October, and gently fermented the wine in stainless steel to retain Lugana’s signature freshness and minerality. Aging on the fine lees for eight months balanced the 2018’s crisp, refreshing acidity with a soft texture that makes it perfect on the table. 

Quite simply, there’s nothing out there like it—stock up.