2024 Mario Schiopetto Pinot Grigio Collio 750 ml

The 2024 Mario Schiopetto Pinot Grigio Collio is “among the finest of its kind, if not the best,” according to James Suckling, who anointed it with a resounding 96-point score and named it his #1 Value Wine of 2025—the top-ranked bottle out of every value wine in the world, across every grape and every region. Suckling called it “a benchmark Pinot Grigio with striking purity and poise,” and it is hard to argue with him.

Mario Schiopetto founded his estate in Collio in 1965 with a singular obsession: to give the purest possible voice to the grapes of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. He imported the vinicultural techniques of France and Germany, introduced temperature-controlled fermentation to a region that had never seen it, and in doing so placed northeastern Italian white wine on the world map. By the time he died in 2003, he had earned a place in the history books alongside Angelo Gaja, Piero Antinori, and Franco Biondi Santi. Robert Parker put it plainly: “they are dazzling wines that I can’t recommend highly enough.”

His children—Carlo, Giorgio, and Maria Angela—have carried that work forward without missing a beat. Karen MacNeil, in The Wine Bible, wrote that Schiopetto’s Pinot Grigio “towers above most other Italian versions” and has “fascinating choreography; it moves with energy… it’s like tasting a sunburst.”

Collio sits at the northeastern edge of Italy, where the Julian Alps drop toward the Adriatic and the air carries a particular salinity that finds its way into every glass. The defining element of the terroir is the ponca—a compressed sandstone marl from the Eocene era—which drains well, forces vines to dig deep, and gives the wine its signature mineral backbone. Diurnal temperature swings between warm days and cool nights preserve aromatics with an intensity that flatland viticulture simply cannot replicate.

What all of this adds up to is a Pinot Grigio of striking purity and poise, with a palate that is at once silky and weightless yet possessed of a laser-like focus and a finish that lingers well past when you’d expect. Fans of great white Burgundy, serious Alsatian Pinot Gris, and top Chablis will recognize the register immediately.