Meroi, Friuli Colli Orientali Rosso, “Nèstri”

It’s no wonder the Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey and his business partner, Chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson, chose the remote Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia as the lodestar for their celebrated Boulder, CO, restaurant, Frasca Food & Wine. Aside from the legendary Lidia Bastianich, who hails from the region, no one paid much attention to Friuli, but obscurity wasn’t the point—what the Frasca founders discovered is a food and wine scene that is arguably the most dynamic in all of Italy.The food, with its Austrian, Slavic, and French touches on an “Italian” base, reflects its frontier positioning, drawing influences from both the Alps and the Adriatic; and when it comes to wine, Friuli does it all. It is best known for the most serious white wines in Italy—wines that share commonalities with the best of Austria and Alsace—but there are also world-class late-harvest sweet wines and a much broader and more impressive red-wine repertoire than most of us realize. The reds, like