Friulano: The Savory Italian White That Lost Its Name and Kept Its Soul

Friulano is pronounced free-oo-LAH-noh.

If you like Sauvignon Blanc but you are tired of the grass-and-grapefruit routine, this is your bottle.

Friulano is the everyday white of Friuli, the corner of Italy tucked against Slovenia and the Alps. It gives you the same job Sauvignon Blanc does — dry, brisk, ready for the table — but it comes at the flavor from a different direction: less green, more savory, with a bitter-almond signature that no other white quite matches.

What it tastes like

Start with the fruit: green pear and white peach, clean and quiet, never showy. Then the middle of the wine does something Sauvignon Blanc rarely does — it turns saline and savory, like a mineral edge with a pinch of salt behind it. The finish is the tell. Good Friulano closes on bitter almond, the same note you get from the skin of a raw almond or a sip of amaretto without the sugar.

It is dry, medium-bodied, and fresh without being sharp. The acidity carries the wine forward instead of cutting at you. That balance is why it works at the table with almost anything — cured ham, roast chicken, a bowl of brothy soup, hard cheese. In Friuli the local move is a glass of it against a plate of San Daniele prosciutto, and the pairing tells you everything: salt against salt, the wine wide enough to hold its ground.

The wine that lost a lawsuit

For most of its life this grape was called Tocai Friulano, and that name is the reason you may never have heard of it.

Hungary makes a famous sweet wine called Tokaji, from the Tokaj region. When Hungary joined the European Union, it protected that name, and in 2007 the European Court of Justice ruled that Italian producers could no longer put "Tocai" on a label. Overnight, a grape with four centuries of history in Friuli — plantings there date to the 1600s — had to be renamed. It became, simply, Friulano: the wine of Friuli.

The name change did the grape no favors on the export shelf. A wine that had built what little recognition it had as "Tocai" started over as a stranger. It also carries a second, older confusion: the variety is genetically Sauvignonasse, once mistaken for Sauvignon Blanc and shipped to Chile under that name. The two are not related. Friulano just spent a couple of centuries answering to other grapes' names, which is a strange kind of luck for a wine this good.

Bottles to look for

The names worth knowing are Friulian houses that have made this grape for decades: Livio Felluga, Venica e Venica, I Clivi, Borgo del Tiglio, Raccaro, and Renato Keber. On the label, watch for two zones. Collio DOC sits in the warmer south and tends to give rounder, more textured wine with a touch of oiliness. Friuli Colli Orientali DOC runs cooler and crisper, more linear. Neither is better — they are two dialects of the same grape.

This is the underdog's usual bargain: a wine with real pedigree, priced like it has something to prove, because most drinkers walked past the shelf without recognizing the name. Here is the honest caveat, though. Cheap Friulano can be thin and forgettable — dilute pear water with nothing underneath. The grape rewards a hillside site and a serious producer, so spend the few extra dollars for a named estate or skip the bottle entirely. There is no formal score here; drink it and decide for yourself.

Where to buy

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Friulano is a specialty find in the US, not a supermarket staple. You will not trip over it, but a well-stocked Italian section or a broad online retailer usually carries at least one Friuli producer. Search by the grape name and filter for Collio or Colli Orientali.

browse Friulano on Wine.com →

— Chris Berry

If you're switching from a famous grape

Reach for Friulano when you would normally grab a Sauvignon Blanc but want something quieter and more savory at the table — less citrus and cut grass, more pear, salt, and almond. It does the same crisp, food-first work; it just does it with a lower voice. Start with a Colli Orientali bottle if you like your whites lean, a Collio if you want a little more weight.

See Wines Like Sauvignon Blanc for the full lineup, and Order This Instead for the swap in one move.

Part of Lesser-Known Wines: 17 Obscure Grapes Worth Switching To — the full underdog-swap guide.