Verdese

Also known as Verdesa, Verdese di Como.

An ancient native white grape of the upper Lake Como ("Lario") shore, nearly driven to extinction by phylloxera. Rescued over roughly two decades of dedicated work by Prof. Leo Miglio, who maintained an experimental vineyard at Domaso to study and recover the old vines of Lake Como; the variety was formally registered in Italy's National Vine Variety Register in 1996, and four years later entered the international Dictionnaire encyclopédique des cépages under the name "Verdese di Como." Currently authorized for use in 11 Lombard IGTs. Its wines are light, harmonious dry whites — the historic local form of the name is "Verdesa."

Named directly in Terre Lariane IGT's own Art. 2.3 (as "Verdese bianco") as one of five white varieties eligible for varietal specification, and singled out in Art. 8 as "unica varietà riconosciuta autoctona" (the sole officially recognized autochthonous variety) of the Lario zone — reflecting its status as the emblematic native grape of the denomination. Genuinely distinct, despite the superficial name resemblance, from "Verdea"/"Colombana Bianca" (data/grapes/verdea.json), a separate Milano/Pavia/Piacenza-area native referenced in the neighboring Collina del Milanese IGT — the two are not the same grape under two spellings, confirmed independently (Civiltà del Bere) as separately rescued and separately registered varieties from unrelated growing areas.