THE way to Italian varietals in Australia was paved by the likes of Coriole's Sangiovese, Crittendon's "i" range and Brown Brothers' excellent Barbera.

Now the old Italian tobacco growers-turned­ winemakers in Victoria's alpine valleys around Bright are making Italian varietal wines their specialty.

Foremost among them is Emo Michelini whose winemaker Greg O'Keefe (ex-early Meadowbank days) was in town recently to show off Michelini's latest which include three of Italy's 200-plus native varietals, rare even in their homeland - Teroldego, Marzemino and Fragolino.

RARE TYPES: Greg O'Keefe with some of Michelini Wines (Picture - Kim Eiszele )

Of Teroldego, Victor Hazan's Italian Wines says: "[It] is the most important red in the Trentino half of the northeastern region of Trentino-Alto Adige but is virtually unknown elsewhere. The thick-skinned, blue-black grape produces a wine that, when young, has a very dark purple colour, intensely vinous odours and a racy, tart, slightly bitter taste. Most of it is produced for a market that does not object to a somewhat grating address to the palate. But careful selection of grapes, judicious blending with a small percentage of gentler varietals and one or two years ageing can beget a wine of highly polished quality, subtle in aroma, fluid and supple in the mouth with persistent length of flavour."

Michelins 2004 Teroldego, $18.50:
Appetising black-purple colour, lovely crushed berries and earthy aromas with distinct savoury flavours of warm ploughed earth and the cowshed (in the best possible way), mouth-watering tannins and an afterthought of fruit coming up at the end. An excellent food wine and an intriguing drop.

Marzemino rates no more than a passing mention in Hazan's book but Jancis Robinson's Vines, Grapes and Wines says it's another Trentino variety which "was once internationally acclaimed and its name lives romantically on at Don Giovanni s last supper.

"The wine, typically, is a lightly plummy offering whose most distinguishing feature is its dark tint (although) it's still possible in very isolated examples to see the riches that presumably were offered by earlier, more concentrated versions".

Michelini 2004 Marzemino, $18.50:
Soft and fruity on both the nose and palate, plummy, as Robinson says, and here perhaps a little stretched and dilute, with sweet oak moving it closer to the Australian mainstream than, I suspect, the Trentino original.

Fragolino turns out not to be an Italian native varietal at all but an American hybrid which many Italians have growing over their pergolas ' as a table grape because of its plump sweetness - fragola meaning strawberry. O'Keefe says it's the biggest seller at their cellar door.

Michelini Fragolino, $20:
Strawberry in name, strawberry in colour, sweet, alcoholic grape juice in flavour, just like eating a warm handful of peeled and pipped grapes. Well chilled, it would make a delightful afternoon veranda drop - and if you're reading this, John Zitto, we both now know what the grape is you have growing over your pergola.

Michelin 2004 Pinot Grigio, $17.50:
Screw cap. Ripe pear aromas, slightly sweet fruit and fuller, more highly flavoured than most grigio styles, beautifully balanced and refreshed by a minerally core of acidity.

Michelini 2004 Sangiovese, $18.50:
Good varietal flavours, a tad lighter than your average Chianti and lacking some of that wine's typical acid and tannic bite.
Perhaps, if we want to look to Italy, closer to the softer sangioveses of Emilia-Romagna than Tuscany but it finishes nice and dry and would make a good pasta quaffer.

Michelini 2004 Barbera, $18.50:
Very promising varietal nose and initial savoury flavours but falls away to a fairly dilute and disappointing finish, lacking, for example, the tight tannins and food-friendly acidity of Brown Brothers Barbera made from grapes from the same alpine region.