Wildbacher

Also known as Blauer Wildbacher.

A black-skinned grape native to Styria, the historic region straddling today's Austria-Slovenia border, where as "Blauer Wildbacher" it is the base of Schilcher, a bright, intensely aromatic, tautly acidic Austrian rosé. It was brought to the hills of Treviso province in the 19th century, where it adapted to the Venetian foothills and gave rise to the Colli Trevigiani IGT's own Wildbacher typology — a rare case of an Alpine grape successfully transplanted south of its home range.

Officially registered for cultivation in Italy since 1980, it remains a minor curiosity grown almost exclusively in Veneto. The Col Sandago estate in Susegana, at over 300 meters altitude, maintains what is reported to be the only significant planting of black Wildbacher outside Austria — some three and a half hectares.