Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

Lugana, dry white Italian wine based on the eponymous grape previously known as Trebbiano di Lugana, the same as trebbiano di soave, so akin to verdicchio produced to the south and south west of Lake Garda in the province of Brescia, straddling the provinces of Lombardy and Veneto.

The region, comprising some 1,000 ha/2,470 acres of vineyard, turns out a sizeable 127,000 hl of wine, made possible by yields of more than 120 hl/ha. The resulting insipid wines, often bottled outside the production area, obscure the fact that genuine Lugana comes from a narrow band of strikingly white, clay-limestone soils on the south shore of Lake Garda known locally known as menadel.