Weingut Ebner, Südtirol Vernatsch

Warning: There’s a lot of bias in this offer. I love this grape variety—Vernatsch (a.k.a. Schiava)—and I love this place—Italy’s mountainous Südtirol region. Südtirol Vernatsch, or Alto Adige Schiava, is a light-bodied red wine that has captured the imagination of wine lovers much like the featherweight champs of France’s Jura, Trousseau, and Poulsard. These are aromatic, softly contoured, quenching red wines that take beautifully to a chill and sit at the opposite pole from most of the red wines that snag the gaudy scores from critics—namely, the biggest, oakiest reds. Weingut Ebner, like most of its peers in this bucolic part of the world, is a lot more than just a winery: It’s a full-immersion wine experience, with a tidy little wine tavern on site along with a chalet-style inn, everything perched at 500 meters above the Isarco (Eisack) River northeast of Bolzano. We talk more about the assorted white wines of the Alto Adige (especially Pinot Grigio), but in fact it’s the red Vernat