A new generation at Scarbolo is reclaiming the expressive soul of Pinot Grigio—through texture, tradition, and time.
Generational transitions in the world of wine can be fraught with uncertainty, but the Scarbolo family in Friuli’s Grave district is currently navigating their own passing of the torch with remarkable mutual respect and care. Accounting for nearly half of Friuli’s total output, Grave (meaning “gravel,” in reference to its soils of alluvial deposits and glacial moraine) encompasses the majority of Friuli’s central plain between Udine and Pordenone. Valter Scarbolo, whose father began the winery in 1982, established a solid reputation for Scarbolo throughout his tenure in the late 1990s and into the 21st century, producing clean, well-balanced wines from a range of varieties both indigenous and imported.
Valter’s daughter Lara became involved in 2016, his son Mattia in 2020, and as the young siblings learned their craft, they began to imagine a different direction for the family winery—one less reliant on technology and more connected to the region’s pre-mechanization winegrowing traditions. Rather than an overnight overhaul, however, Lara and Mattia—with Valter’s all-in encouragement and participation—slowly began phasing in their own experimental wines in 2020, fully taking the reins in 2022 and assigning increasingly significant portions of each harvest to their newly imagined bottlings.
Pinot Grigio, Reimagined
In the world of wine, Pinot Grigio, the most widely planted variety at Scarbolo, too often succumbs to a sort of uninspiring neutrality, its capacity for expression blunted through hyper-technical, commercially focused winemaking. In Lara and Mattia’s skillful hands, however, the variety vibrates with the thrill of discovery. The siblings use Pinot Grigio’s naturally subdued fruit profile to their advantage, producing wines which foreground textural nuance and mineral potency, and leaning into the profound expressive capabilities of the variety’s deeply colored skins. Between the ramato-informed “Pipinot,” the stony single-site “Mepari,” and the unabashedly long-macerated “Salvadi,” Lara and Mattia’s Pinot Grigio pulse with a lifeforce achievable only through the kind of profoundly felt artisanal approach that has always guided our work at Rosenthal Wine Merchant.
Less Land, More Intention
At its peak volume, Scarbolo encompassed nearly 30 hectares of vines, planted between the winery’s founding in 1982 and 2004, but in 2022 the family downsized to their best-situated 14 hectares, all located within three kilometers of the winery itself, which sits in the town of Lauzacco in the far eastern stretches of Grave near the Slovenian border. This reduction allowed Lara and Mattia to more smoothly implement the labor-intensive artisanal approach their new vision demanded, and today the winery is certified organic, with harvest taking place entirely by hand—both changes from Valter’s time. The siblings have also begun employing animals to eat vineyard grass, thereby limiting usage of the heavy machinery which unfavorably compacts Grave’s clay-rich soils.
Working With Nature, Not Against It
Lara and Mattia’s continually evolving approach in the cellar prioritizes less technological intervention, more patience, and greater trust in their raw materials, but rather than drastically reversing direction, they have wisely been making incremental changes with portions of their harvest, observing and digesting the results and remaining open and flexible. Among the battery of changes, they have introduced thoughtful whole-cluster fermentation and judicious skin maceration for certain wines; they have experimented with co-fermentation in the old Friulian style; they no longer block malolactic fermentation, nor do they filter; and, notably, they have decreased reliance on the stainless steel tanks employed in Valter’s time, favoring the respiring and transforming qualities of oak casks for aging.
Through all the evolution underfoot, Valter stands behind Lara and Mattia in full support, helping them particularly significantly in their vineyard work, and offering his seasoned perspective as they reimagine the future of the family business; his smile as Lara and Mattia discuss their new wines speaks for itself.
