Destination Lugana Houston Masterclass 2024-05-10

Through my private Facebook wine group, I found out about an event where the Consorzio Lugana was hosting a tasting group in Houston. This was part of a multi-city tour in the US to help promote knowledge about the Lugana DOC wine region in Northern Italy.

This experience absolutely exceeded my expecations. Courtesy of some significant funding from the European Union to promote their agricultural exports, several lovely Italian folks coordinated a great event with help from US-based partners. If you’ve never heard of Lugana, you’d be in the same boat as me until a couple of years ago. (I happened to stumble on a great producer bottle at Costco.) The event venue was at Texas Wine School in the Greenway / Upper Kirby (central) part of the city.

Once the event was underway, the host team poured 4 different wines from this rather small region in Italy which is on the southern shore of Lake Garda in Northern Italy, halfway between Milan and Venice. Check out the map below to see the region and all the producers.

The Lugana DOC

• 2 Regions (One of the few Italian wine regions to span regions)
• 5 Municipalities (cities)
• 1 Grape Variety - Turbiana, which is an indigenous sub-varietal of Trebbiano
• 10,000 Years Ago - The time frame in which glacial activity formed Lake Garda. The glaciers subsequently retreated, leaving the lake that supports the unique mild climate in the Lugana DOC as well as leaving behind glacial soil deposits that contribute to the terroir expression.

Tasting Notes

There are 5 styles of wines in the Lugana region, but this event featured the two most popular, the regular Lugana which represents ~90% of the production, and the Riserva, which must be aged at least 2 years, 6 months of that in the bottle. Nine wines were presented. My impressions were that both styles had a spectrum of wine expressions. On one side there is a ligther style with delicate floral aromatics and sometimes almond notes. The other end had some weighty wines with a prounouced pleasantly earthy & gently funky sour cream + other aged lactic notes with layers of mushroom. On the palate these more complex whites still had the delicious apple, white peach + floral character and a firm base of acididty. Most of the wine geeks there including me slightly preferred the interesting complex styles but all the wines were delicious. I was excited to see the producer my wife and I have tried before from Costco, Tenuta Roveglia, featured in this tasting as well. Despite the quality of the wines presented all were under 20€ at the wineries. With import and distribution markup you should still be able to find them well under $30, and even under $15 for higher volume base Lugana style.

This event was an delicious way to experience a deeper study into an emerging fascinating small wine region in Italy. Wines from the Lugana DOC feature a combination of quality, value and diversity of styles that very much align with the ethos of this site.