2024 Pinot Bianco, Vorberg, Cantina Terlan:
'an automatic purchase'
Terlano's continued excellence from vintage to vintage is remarkable.
Eric Guido, vinous.com, December 2025
2024 Pinot Bianco Riserva, Vorberg, Cantina Terlano
£195 per case of 6 bottles in bond
£220 per case of 3 magnums in bond
£170 per double magnum (300cl) in bond
£390 per imperial (600cl) in bond
There are a handful of wines that I think you can buy almost routinely; such is their consistency from one vintage to the next. Cantina Terlano’s Vorberg Pinot Bianco Riserva is firmly in that category and is something of an automatic purchase for me.
We have offered this wine for many years now and, if anything, my estimation of it continues to rise. It has that rather rare ability to be accessible relatively young in most vintages and yet age almost implausibly well. Terlano has an extraordinary track record with mature Pinot Bianco going back decades, something we have commented on frequently in previous offers.
The newly released 2024 is a rather different expression to the 2023. It was a cooler and significantly more challenging growing season. Spring was rainy and cool through to the end of June, demanding considerable work in the vineyards, before warmer, sunnier conditions during the summer helped advance ripening. Harvest ultimately came later than usual. Encouragingly, the regional assessment is that the resulting white wines possess fruit, finesse and elegance. Tick, tick and tick.
That character comes through clearly in the 2024 Vorberg, tasted here today. Where the 2023 was immediately expressive and remarkably complete, the 2024 is tauter, more restrained and tightly wound. I suspect it will take a few years to really start showing everything it has to offer, but the quality is already very clear. That is for sure.
The aromatics are precise and cool-toned, with lemon verbena, aromatic herbs and a distinctly mineral quality. There is something akin to verdello, that green-lemon character the Italians describe so well, running through the wine, with notes of fresh pear. On the palate it is long and focused, with a pronounced saline quality on the finish. The acidity is beautifully wound into the wine, giving shape and direction without ever standing apart from the fruit. There is nothing extraneous here, nothing that gets in the way. This is really about purity and the expression of the site.
And perhaps that is the key to Vorberg. There is very little to obscure its origins.
The fruit comes from steep south and southwest-facing slopes, at altitude, on nutrient-poor sandy soils. The combination of altitude, exposure and poor soils helps control vigour while allowing the fruit to ripen fully and evenly. Terlano employs careful fruit selection and gentle whole-cluster pressing, with fermentation and ageing on lees for an extended period in large oak. The winemaking does not seek to impose itself on the wine; rather, it allows the character of Vorberg to come through.
Pinot Bianco is not a variety routinely associated with genuinely fine wine, and perhaps that is part of Vorberg’s attraction. Here it punches well above the quality level one might ordinarily expect from the variety. I know of very few Pinot Biancos that compete at this level, and certainly very few that compete at anything approaching this price.
What still amazes me is that it comes from a cooperative. Terlano operates at a level that would be impressive for a small, quality-obsessed domaine, let alone a growers’ cooperative. That point may have become familiar to those who have followed these wines with us over the years, but it doesn’t become any less remarkable for that. I marvel at it every vintage.
And then there is the longevity. Terlano’s record here is exceptional. The Cantina deliberately retains bottles of Vorberg for extended ageing, while old examples have demonstrated just how far Pinot Bianco can go in the right hands. As we have mentioned before, Antonio Galloni awarded the 1955 Vorberg 100 points when he tasted it in 2013! Quite extraordinary, and I am sure you’ll agree that is no overstatement.
I wouldn’t suggest waiting anything like that long for the 2024, but I would give it a little more time than some recent vintages. There is a coiled quality to this wine at present, a sense that it has plenty yet to reveal. For me, Vorberg remains one of those wines that is simply worth buying almost every year. It is highly individual, remarkably ageworthy and consistently performs at a level that belies both its grape variety and its price. The cooler, more tightly focused 2024 is another seriously fine example.
2024 Pinot Bianco Riserva, Vorberg, Cantina Terlano
£195 per case of 6 bottles in bond
£220 per case of 3 magnums in bond
£170 per double magnum (300cl) in bond
£390 per imperial (600cl) in bond
There is limited availability of the larger formats.
Please let us know of your interest.
Simon
simon.larkin@atlasfinewines.com