2019 Castelfeder Mont Mes Pinot Grigio Vignetti delle Dolomiti 750 ml

In the foothills of Italy’s towering Dolomites, just a few hours from the narrow canals of Venice, Alfons Giovanett toiled over Pinot Grigio vines that are redefining this category of white wine. Watered by pristine mountain snowmelt, an explosive mineral throughline runs through the Castelfeder Mont Mes Pinot Grigio, which is like a sip of pure sunshine. 

Dazzling citrus aromas collide with fresh floral aromatics in the 2019, which segue into just-picked apricot and peach flavors. This wine proves that when Pinot Grigio is planted in the right place, it absolutely has the potential to achieve incredible heights. 

The trick is to find the producers who lavish on it all the care and attention it deserves, and who have the experience to coax it to greatness. It’s been a generations-long project for Castelfeder, but the pay-off is unforgettable: Pinot Grigio that combines freshness with structure, and minerality with just-picked florals in a combination that demands sip after sip. 

Italian wine guru and writer Ian D’Agata once said that Alto Adige arguably makes Italy’s best white wines. Bottles like this embody that claim brilliantly, and at a price that makes it easy to purchase by the case. Restaurants like Napa Valley’s Bottega and Los Angeles’ Bar Toscana have relied on this wine for its deliciousness on its own and easy, delicious rapport with everything from burrata to carbonara. Which makes sense: At the price—frankly, at twice the price—this is a remarkable wine. 

Castelfeder was founded by Alfons Giovanett in 1969, taken over by his son Gunter in 1989, and now the third generation of the family, Ines and Ivan, are helping to produce what is, in our estimation, one of the single most impressive white wines in Italy today.

Through sustainable farming and impeccable winemaking, they have bottled a wine that practically vibrates with cleansing minerality that slices right through the evocative fruit and higher-toned floral notes of this crystalline wine. And as it continues to evolve in the bottle—it’s got more than five years of life left, easily—that sense of minerality, the Dolomite chalk pulsing through it, will continue to play an ever more prominent role.