Lugana DOC

The Lugana wine is a hidden gem. Despite being widely exported, the Lugana wine is still relatively unknown outside Italy and even within, and its demand is mainly driven by tourists returning home from a holiday on the Lake Garda.

The Lugana wine is made with Trebbiano di Lugana that has recently changed its name to “Turbiana” to avoid any confusion with any of the other Trebbiano grape grown all over Italy, because of its poor reputation, and the Lugana DOC wine region is situated on the southern part of the Lake Garda, divided between Veneto and Lombardy.

The Lugana wine has always been associated with a light, easy to drink wine, a wine to drink whilst sitting outside, in a summer evening, however, in the last few years there has been a push towards the production of better Lugana wines, even for the basic Lugana, and the first results are slowly showing promising signs, the grape and the wine are proving to be much more than an easy to drink dry white wine. If you want to know more about the Lugana DOC trends read Andrea’s post. The Lugana DOC appellation allows the following wines to be called Lugana:

Lugana, Superiore (requires 1 year maturation not necessarily in oak), Riserva (aged for min. 24 months, 6 months in bottle, not necessarily in oak), Vendemmia Tardiva (late harvest) and Spumante, very limited production following both the Charmat and Metodo Classico.