Borgo del Tiglio Studio di Bianco 2024

The Land

On Easter Monday 1989, Nicola Manferrari signed for five hectares on the southeast slopes of the Ruttars hill and wrote later that he had a powerful sensation something good was going to happen there. Half the parcel is planted. The grower who sold it, Giorgio, had cleared the woods by hand and planted an assortment of white varieties with no particular scheme, and that accident is what this wine is built on. Ruttars runs cool despite its sun, sits close enough to the Slovenian frontier that the vineyard looks across it, and carries limestone outcroppings that break the surface. Manferrari considers the site specifically suited to aromatic whites: scent without heaviness, flavor without weight.

The Wine

A blend of Friulano, Sauvignon Blanc, and Riesling Renano, historically built around roughly half Friulano with the balance split between the other two, though the Sauvignon share has climbed as newer plantings came online. The composition was not designed on paper. Manferrari vinified the Ruttars lots separately, then spent the following seasons mixing every possible combination at fifty-fifty to see what happened, and the three-way blend won. Sauvignon and Riesling carry aromas from different chemical families and are widely held to be incompatible; Friulano is the solvent that makes them cohere. He picks the Sauvignon fully ripe so it can be processed alongside the later varieties. Vinification matches the top whites: delicate pressing, malolactic, nine months in 250-liter oak, around 14% alcohol. Juniper, resin, warm spice, ripe peach, green almond. Broad and waxy through the middle, with a long saline close. Made only in good years, never in poor ones.

The People

Ask what Manferrari actually changed in Friuli and the answer is Friulano. When he began, Tocai was either insipid or coarse, and the German-school enologists then dominant picked it early to chase acidity, which stripped out whatever flavor it had. He went the opposite way: fully ripe fruit, pressed gently on a principle borrowed from Champagne. Some credit him with inventing the dining Tocai, a white with the structure to carry a real meal. He is unsentimental about the fashion for indigenous grapes and says he kept the old vines because his degree work in botanical pharmacy taught him that older plants carry more concentrated material, not out of loyalty to anything. The same patience runs the cellar. He releases nothing early, holds the wine until bottle time pulls the mineral register forward, and declassifies entire vintages that will not repay the wait.

Food Pairing

Manferrari aims this wine at rich, aromatic cooking, and names truffles and ginger specifically. A risotto finished with butter and parmesan under shaved white truffle is the obvious target, the wine's waxy weight matching the starch. Seared scallops with brown butter and a grating of fresh ginger works on the same logic from the other direction. Roast chicken stuffed with lemon and thyme is the plainer version, and none the worse. For cheese, aged Montasio, made a short drive from these vines, meets the salinity. This is the bottle to open when you have cooked something you are actually proud of.