If Italian wine aficionados were to lay claim to their favourite wine regions in Italy, areas like Piedmont, Tuscany, Sicily and Veneto would easily roll off their tongue. Yet some of the most character-driven, soulful, and terroir-expressive wines in Italy are produced in Aosta, a region which borders Switzerland to the north and France to the northwest.
Charming, authentic and picturesque, Aosta is Italy’s smallest wine region and as a result, it is also one of its least known. Tucked under the Pennine Alps, between Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, this small but glorious area has 400 hectares planted with vines. Compared with neighbouring Piedmont which has around 43,000ha, it’s easy to see how this gem of a wine region is often overlooked.
