This is what good wine from the Pignolo grape tastes like

The Italian Pignolo grape is very rare. Pignolo produces robust red wines with substantial tannins and intense fruit notes of red cherries and ripe plums. They are usually aged in oak and age excellently.

The Pignolo grows in Friuli, in the far northeast of Italy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it seemed to be extinct. Until the Abbey of Rosazzo discovered a row of Pignolo in the vineyard that had miraculously survived the phylloxera epidemic that destroyed almost all European vineyards in the late nineteenth century.

The word Pignolo means "picky" in Italian, but the variety is also etymologically linked to several other grape varieties, as the suffix pigno means pinecone, referring to the shape of the bunches. Pignoletto (also known as Grechetto di Todi) and Pignola share the same name but are unrelated.

Pignolo is sometimes blended, but sometimes also made as a single varietal. You rarely find a wine made from the Pignolo grape in the Netherlands, as production is still very limited.