Ramato

Ramato is not a grape but a way of handling one. The word means coppery in Italian, and it describes Pinot Grigio made the way it was made in Friuli and the Veneto before the modern pale style took over: left on its skins for a period, so that the pinkish-grey berries give up their colour to the wine.

Pinot Grigio is a mutation of Pinot Noir, and its skins are not green but a dusty rose-grey. Pressed immediately, as almost all commercial Pinot Grigio now is, the juice runs nearly colourless. Left in contact for anything from a few hours to several weeks, it turns onion-skin pink, copper or deep amber depending on how long.

The difference is not only visual. Skin contact brings phenolic weight and a light tannic grip, and shifts the aromatics from neutral pear towards dried apricot, red apple skin, orange peel, almond and dried flowers. The wine gains texture and savour, and loses the anonymity that made Pinot Grigio a commercial phenomenon in the first place.

The style was standard in north-east Italy for generations and was largely abandoned in the second half of the twentieth century, when export markets wanted pale, cold, neutral white wine and the region obliged. Its revival since the 1990s has been part of the broader rediscovery of skin-contact winemaking in Friuli, and producers in Oregon, California and Australia have taken it up too.

It occupies an odd middle ground — too coloured to pass as white, too delicate to sit comfortably among the full-blooded orange wines — which is much of its appeal.