Back when they ran their own restaurant programs, our VPs of Wine, Eduardo Dingler and Advanced Sommelier Laura Koffer, both had this Falanghina on their wine lists with regularity. That's not a coincidence. When two of the sharpest palates on our team independently kept coming back to the same bottle, year after year, the wine is doing something right.

What it's doing right starts with the terroir. Terre Stregate—"Bewitched Lands"—sits in the Guardia Sanframondi hills of the Sannio Beneventano, about an hour north of Naples. The region sits inland from the Tyrrhenian coast, sheltered by the Apennines, and it's been growing Falanghina since the days of the Roman Empire—this was the grape behind Falernian, the most celebrated wine of the ancient world. The Iacobucci family has farmed this particular stretch of volcanic, mineral-rich clay for five generations, since 1898.

Today, Filomena and Carlo tend 25 organically farmed hectares of native varieties, and Falanghina is the heart of everything they do here. The altitude—400 to 500 meters above sea level—keeps the growing season cooler and unhurried, and the saline character of the soils finds its way into every bottle.

In the cellar, the Svelato is fermented in stainless steel and aged on its lees for several months—long enough to build texture and weight, not so long that it loses the vivid, citrus-driven brightness that defines it. The result is a wine that feels both precise and generous, with a finish that lingers well past what the price tag would suggest. It's the kind of bottle Gambero Rosso has honored again and again over the years.

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