📍 Carso

Carso is a limestone plateau near Trieste in north-eastern Italy, in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. It runs along the border with Slovenia, where the plateau continues under the name Kras. The name is essentially the same in Italian and Slovene ("karst"). This is a land of stony red earth, thin grass and the sharp bora wind that blows down from the mountains.

The soil is iron-rich red clay over limestone, and the vineyards hide in hollows and on narrow terraces. The wines are fresh, with marked minerality and a salty edge shaped by the nearby Adriatic Sea.

The main local white grape is Vitovska, rare and old, made into dry wines, sometimes orange wines with long skin contact. Alongside grow Malvasia Istriana and the red Terrano, a sharp and dark variety that gives austere reds.

For comparison with its neighbours: to the north Carso borders Collio and Colli Orientali, better-known white zones of Friuli, and to the east it continues into the Slovenian Kras, where the same grapes are called by other names.