PIWI Wines Look to the Future: “Not a Threat to DOC or DOCG Identity”

Summary

Nicola Biasi does not really do qualified statements. The “Resistenti Nicola Biasi” network — Albafiorita, Tenuta della Casa in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Ca’ da Roman, Colle Regina and Poggio Pagnan in Veneto, Oddone Prati in Piemonte, Vin de la Neu in Trentino, and Progetto Mosella in Germany — has been making the same case for a while: resistant grapes are not a threat to Italian wine identity. At a press event in Trento on 20 May 2026, Biasi put it plainly enough. An appellation that panics at the thought of blending in 10–15% of resistant varieties perhaps has an identity not as solid as people think.

The regulatory situation is one anyone following this debate will recognise. PIWI cultivation is officially permitted in eight Italian regions — Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lombardia, Emilia-Romagna, Marche, Abruzzo, and Piemonte — yet the total planted area barely reaches 2,000 hectares, nearly all of it clustered in the northeast. The EU would allow resistant varieties into appellations, but Italy’s Testo Unico del Vino (Law 238/2016, art. 33 comma 6) still bars them from DOC and DOCG status, leaving them confined to IGT wines for now. The constraint is not uniform — a multi-varietal DOC has more obvious room for manœuvre than a strictly mono-varietal denomination like Barolo — but either way, the category sits in a kind of waiting room, legally tolerated but not yet admitted to the prestige tier.

The environmental argument for PIWI is real, though Biasi is wary of leaning too hard on it as a selling point. The network’s data points to a 38% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to conventional viticulture, and the practical differences in the vineyard are tangible — fewer tractor passes, less diesel, less compacted soil, vineyard workers handling considerably less chemical spray. Consumers might find all of that interesting, he says, but they will only come back if the wine is good. The real work, in other words, is in the cellar.

There is a cultural argument underneath all of this that tends to get lost. Biasi thinks Italy is too attached to the grape variety and not attached enough to the territory — that the variety should be a vehicle, not the destination. And alongside that runs a more practical frustration: PIWI still gets discussed as though it were a single thing. Souvignier Gris, Johanniter, Bronner, Soreli, Solaris, Cabernet Eidos, Cabernet Cortis — the differences between them are at least as significant as the differences between Merlot, Sangiovese, and Teroldego. None of them are GMOs either, a fact that apparently still needs stating in a sector that treats novelty with suspicion.

Of the varieties, Souvignier Gris is the one Biasi talks about most. He singles it out as particularly significant — good acidity retention, a range of styles from sparkling to macerated, and in his view the clearest evidence that these grapes, vinified properly, can say something about the territory they come from rather than just something about themselves.

Our take

This is a platform for Biasi’s views, and it is worth being clear about that. The piece is a profile, and as a profile it does its job — Biasi is articulate, his argument is interesting, and he gets a thorough, sympathetic hearing. But the central provocation, that a denomination worried about a handful of resistant vines is essentially advertising its own fragility, goes entirely uncontested. It is a good line. There is a reasonable counter-argument that nobody puts: appellation rules work partly because they are not flexible, and every well-intentioned exception creates a precedent. The environmental data is cited without any context about how it was measured or by whom. The wider debate — how consortia are actually responding, what the legislative path looks like, what other producers think — gets a mention but not much more. The trade press profile format rarely demands hard interrogation, and this one is no exception.

About the author

No individual byline is credited, though WineNews sometimes attributes pieces to editorial staff collectively rather than to a named journalist, and this appears to be one of those cases. Either way, this is editorial content built around an interview with Biasi, and it reads accordingly — his arguments run through the piece unchallenged, his data goes unverified, and the framing stays sympathetic throughout. That might simply reflect the conventions of trade press profiling, where the subject tends to get a friendly hearing. But Biasi is also the commercial operator of the network the article is effectively promoting, and the absence of any independent voice is worth noting.

About the publisher

WineNews has been around since 2000 and is genuinely embedded in the Italian wine world — well-connected, well-read within the sector, and closely tied to it commercially. The page hosting this article carries advertising banners from dozens of Italian producers and consortia, several of whom have a direct interest in the regulatory questions the article touches on. None of that makes the content inaccurate, but it does explain the editorial register: broadly supportive of the industry, reluctant to take uncomfortable positions, more interested in giving people a voice than in interrogating what they say. Fine to read, but not a place to go looking for hard questions.