South Tyrol of excellence: 100/100 Falstaff al Terlaner I Primo Grande Cuvée 2016 di Terlano

South Tyrol is increasingly becoming the land of excellent white wines, loved by fans, collectors, and the great international critics. To the point that some labels are judged substantially “perfect”, and get the highest marks. As happened these days to the Terlaner I Primo Grande Cuvée of Cantina di Terlano, the first white wine not only of the territory, but of Italy to win the 100/100 Falstaff, an Austrian wine magazine, of great importance and influence throughout the German market, strategic for South Tyrol and Italy, which until now had reserved this judgment to a few wines, and only red, as the Masseto 2015 and Brunello di Montalcino Cerretalto 2012 of Casanova di Neri). “A great wine, the fruit of a great vintage”, say the managers of Falstaff, who in recent days in Bolzano have rewarded the winery from South Tyrol and the winemaker Rudi Kofler, who explains: ”The wine is the result of our constant search for quality and perfectly expresses the terroir of Terlano with its climatic and geological features. Freshness, elegance, and complexity, combined with minerality and longevity: these are the peculiarities that characterize the Terlaner I Primo Grande Cuvée, a wine produced only in years that allow a particular evolution and development. The 2016 vintage was undoubtedly one of these, as demonstrated by the 100 points awarded to our Terlaner I Primo Grande Cuvée 2016”.
The first vintage of Terlaner I Primo Grande Cuvée, 2011, was born with the aim of creating one of the most important white wines in Italy, produced today in just 2,476 bottles, mainly for haute cuisine.
Another pearl among the international awards arrived in South Tyrol, which follows by one year the news of the 100/100 of the prestigious “The Wine Advocate”, awarded in 2018 to another excellence of the territory, the Epokale 2009 of the Cantina Tramin, so far the only “perfect”Italian white wine, according to the magazine founded by Robert Parker (the correspondent from Italy is Monica Larner), and the only 100/100 awarded outside Tuscany and Piedmont, the more “accustomed” regions, with their great red wines to receive awards of this kind, albeit rare.
As recently happened, for example, to Solaia 2016 of Antinori, Masseto 2016 and Barolo Falletto Vigna le Rocche 2015 of Bruno Giacosa, rated 100/100 by James Suckling.