(Bloomberg) -- When famous Tuscan wine estate Tenuta dell’Ornellaia unveiled a white counterpart to its expensive flagship red in 2016, 400 bottles were offered via online lottery to Relais & Chateaux’s U.S. restaurants. Despite a price tag of more than $200 each, they were scooped up in minutes.

What a surprise! Italy’s white wines rarely get the same global respect or prices as its collectible reds from such regions as Tuscany (Super Tuscans, Brunello) and Piemonte, home of Barolo and Barbaresco. 

But they should.

Global wine marketplace Liv-ex ranks the world’s top labels on their average trade prices. In the latest ranking, of the 39 Italian wines that qualified, only one was white. (To qualify, four or more vintages of an individual wine had to have traded on Liv-ex.com during the year ended May 1 at prices that fit within one of five tiers.) As Piero Antinori of the eponymous Tuscan winemaking family once told me with a shrug, “Red wine is wine. White wine is just white wine.”

Top Italian producers like Ornellaia are aiming to change this stereotype. Several brand-new collector-grade whites are arriving this fall, just as Liv-ex reports a big increase in interest in the country’s offerings; the number of individual wines (which could include multiple vintages from the same producer) traded in the past decade has risen 1,506%. 

Fortunately there are no Airbus factories in Italy, so the country’s wines are exempt from President Trump’s tit-for-tat tariffs on European products ( like Scotch) going into effect on Oct. 18. Prices for these new whites are eye-watering enough without tacking on an additional 25%.

The $400-Plus Club

The first-ever vintage of Bibi Graetz’s Colore Bianco, for example, makes its entrance this month at $450 a bottle, about the same as his Colore red. Graetz, a Tuscan native and former abstract artist, leaped into winemaking about 20 years ago and is noted for making tiny batches of boutique wines.

He’s experimented with single-vineyard whites from old fields of ansonica grapes on Giglio, an island off the Tuscan coast. Only three barrels (900 bottles) of this new one were made. Is it worth it? Well, the wine is lush, layered, and very complex, but the price reeks of scarcity and aspiration.

The biggest buzz surrounds the Ornellaia winery’s Bianco, first released three years ago, partly because of the international reputation of its silky, refined red cuvée of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, and petit verdot. This Bordeaux-style blend first made in the 1980s helped kick-start the Super Tuscan revolution. The estate, now owned by the Frescobaldi family, is on the cool coast of Tuscany in the once-obscure Bolgheri region. Although the winery made a lively, polished sauvignon blanc blend named Poggio alle Gazze for a few years, the vines were pulled out after the 2001 harvest to make room for more in-demand red grapes.

The man behind Ornellaia’s recent white wine revolution is Axel Heinz, who arrived as winemaker in 2005. After reviving Poggio alle Gazze, he dreamed of making “one of the great white wines of the world.” The bearded, wild-haired Heinz, who has the air of an Italian poet, spent years trying out sauvignon blanc blends for his great white. It seems to get better every year.

There are big differences among the new Tuscan whites when it comes to grape variety and how the wines are made.

A Multitude of Varietals

Some, like Ornellaia, opt to use an international grape. 

The first white from idiosyncratic estate Tenuta di Trinoro, also arriving this month, is 100% semillon, another white Bordeaux variety. Owner Andrea Franchetti, who’s a nephew of artist Cy Twombly, makes fantastic reds. He experimented with various white varieties, including Hungarian furmint, but most proved unsuccessful at his estate in remote Val d’Orcia in southeast Tuscany. Semillon worked, but it was 10 years before Franchetti decided to release bottles commercially. 

When cult winery Petrolo, known for its merlot-based Galatrona (the Petrus of Italy), introduced a white two years ago, it chose a native Italian grape, a special clone of trebbiano Toscano that dates to the 1300s. “I’d been making the grapes into vin santo,” owner Luca Sanjust told me at a trade tasting in Manhattan. (Vin santo is a style of Italian dessert wine made from dried grapes.) “But I decided I wanted to make a tribute to the great Tuscan dry whites of the past that were sent to the popes in Rome.”  

The idea of great Italian whites isn’t completely new, and a handful—Miani, Valentini, Fiorano, Quintarelli—have loyal followings. But in red regions such as Tuscany and Piemonte, it hasn’t been much of a thing. Barbaresco maestro Angelo Gaja, who revolutionized how Italian wine was marketed, was the first to show that exceptional whites could be produced in Piemonte’s Langhe Hills. He got into a fight with his father when he planted chardonnay back in 1979 and named the wine Gaia & Rey, the only Italian white listed in this year’s Liv-ex classification.

When Gaja bought land in Bolgheri, not far from Ornellaia, there was no question he would make a white there at his Ca’Marcanda estate. He planted a mix of Italian and French grapes—vermentino, viognier, and fiano—and called the wine Vistamare, which means “sea view.”

His daughter Gaia Gaja is convinced Italy’s future lies with white wines. The family is planting chardonnay and sauvignon blanc at high altitudes in the Alta Langa zone of Piemonte. They dream, she says, of creating an Italian “côte de blanc,” or white wine region.

A Taste of Great Italian White Wine

2017 Tenuta di Trinoro Bianco di Trinoro ($75) This brand-new 100% semillon is from vines growing on a tiny parcel of sand on the highest part of this renowned Tuscan estate. It smells like Golden Delicious apples and flowers; because of the vintage’s drought conditions, it’s quite concentrated, yet still fresh and bright. Only 1,000 bottles were made. 

2017 Ca’ Marcanda Vistamare ($80)Since 2016, Gaja’s white from Bolgheri has been a blend of vermentino, viognier, and, to add refreshment, fiano. It’s a more mineral-accented blend than it used to be, with green aromas of mint and ferns and flavors of spice, flint, and nectarine. Delizioso.

2016 Petrolo Boggina B Bianco ($85)This cult winery added a white with the 2014 vintage. Made from a local clone of trebbiano Toscano, this is a subtle, golden wine with aromas of warm honey, mint, and candied citrus rind. Its fresh green flavors and round texture make it perfect for autumn drinking. 

2017 Le Macchiole Paleo Bianco ($105)The winery’s founders started producing tiny quantities of this savory blend of chardonnay and sauvignon blanc in Bolgheri for a local restaurant in 1991. In the current vintage, fruit flavors mingle with a salty, mineral, herbal character and a bit of spice. The name Paleo refers to a wild herb on the Tuscan coast. 

2016 Tenuta Dell’Ornellaia Bianco ($220)In this vintage, the wine is all sauvignon blanc, but its rich, complex character is as far from a bright zingy New Zealand example as you can get. The intense golden color, layers of ripe crisp apple and wild herb aromas, and vibrant mouth-filling flavors suggest it will age beautifully. 

2016 Gaja Gaia & Rey Chardonnay ($310) This 100% chardonnay from Piemonte is one of Italy’s most expensive whites. This vintage is sleek and polished, like a haute couture dress made of heavy silk. Creamy-textured and seamless, it features floral aromas with hints of ginger, almond, and citrus flavors.

2018 Bibi Graetz Colore Bianco ($450)Graetz produced this new white from 80-year-old ansonica vines on Giglio Island. The white counterpart to his already sought-after Colore rosso is lush-textured, with fragrant orange blossom aromas and salty-toned peach flavors. It’s layered and complex, but … $400?

To contact the author of this story: Elin McCoy in New York at elinmccoy@gmail.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Rovzar at crovzar@bloomberg.net

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