The Tagliamento river: a mosaic of soils, climates and wines

01.11.2023 Azienda agricola Pitars 2 min read

The Tagliamento is the creator of the Friulian plain, which it has shaped over millennia by depositing materials from the Alpine arc of Friuli Venezia Giulia. The soil is therefore alluvial and collects all the richness of the minerals brought downstream by the river. The Pitars vineyards are located in different areas and the varieties are distributed in such a way as to respond to the peculiarities of the different soils and optimize their characteristics.

The vineyard is in fact an intelligent plant, which manages to adapt to almost all latitudes, optimizing the resources available. For example, the red grape varieties prefer the more clayey soils of the Passariano vineyards, which retain water and minerals useful for the growth of the plant and the ripening of the grapes. The white varieties, on the other hand, are found on the mineral-rich but more draining gravels of Tenuta San Martino, on the right bank of the Tagliamento, where the grapes can best express their characteristics of minerality and freshness.

In the morainic amphitheater where the company is located together with many other wineries in the region, the cold currents coming from the Alps meet with the temperate and salt-rich breezes coming from the Adriatic. The soil and the water that the vineyards feed on are enriched by the constant contributions of the Tagliamento: they breathe and feed on the natural environment created by the river, which fortunately has retained a high degree of naturalness to this day. This allowed the Pitars winery to isolate and select some native yeasts from their vineyards that are used in fermentations with the aim of obtain wines that are as authentic an expression of this Terroir as possible.

The Pitars winery has dedicated a limited edition bottle to the Tagliamento which contains one of the varieties that best express themselves in the Tagliamento wines, Sauvignon Blanc. ‘Cuntrevint’ is born from Sauvignon grapes, which in Friulian means against the wind. This wine is rich in aromas and scents typical of the vine grown in this very particular terroir, the grave (gravels) of the last natural Alpine river in Europe.