Table of Contents

- What Is Cortese, Exactly?
- Tasting Profile: What to Expect
- Cortese vs. Pinot Grigio vs. Sauvignon Blanc
- Food Pairings
- Running a Cortese Tasting for a Group
- Common Questions
- Bringing a Cortese Tasting to Your Team
- Further Reading

Ask a table of wine drinkers what grape is in a bottle of Gavi and I'd bet most of them can't tell you — even people who've ordered it plenty of times with seafood. That's the thing about cortese: it's been quietly making one of Piedmont's best white wines for centuries, and it's almost never the star of the conversation. Pinot Grigio gets the name recognition, Sauvignon Blanc gets the flavor-forward reputation, and cortese just sits there making genuinely excellent, food-friendly wine that most people drink without ever learning its name. I think that's a shame, and it's also exactly the kind of gap that makes for a great "aha" moment in a tasting.

This guide covers what cortese actually is, why Gavi became its signature wine, how it compares to Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc, and how to build it into a tasting your group will actually remember.

What Is Cortese, Exactly?
Cortese is a white grape variety native to the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, where it's been documented since at least the 17th century. It's a naturally high-acid, relatively neutral grape — meaning it doesn't carry huge, showy aromatics on its own — which is precisely why it works so well as a structural, food-driving wine rather than a sipping-alone showpiece.

The grape's defining expression is Gavi, a DOCG-designated wine made in the hills around the town of Gavi in southeastern Piedmont, close to the Ligurian coast. That coastal proximity matters: Gavi has historically been Genoa's house white, the wine locals reach for with the region's seafood-heavy cooking, and its lean, citrus-and-almond profile reflects that maritime influence even though the vineyards themselves sit inland. Gavi di Gavi (or Gavi del Comune di Gavi) refers to wine made specifically from grapes grown within the town of Gavi itself, generally considered the top tier of the appellation.

Cortese is grown almost nowhere else in significant volume. A small amount exists in other parts of Piedmont and in a handful of experimental New World plantings, but functionally, if you're drinking cortese, you're drinking a wine tied to one specific corner of Italy — which gives it a clarity of identity a lot of more widely planted grapes lack.

Tasting Profile: What to Expect
Cortese produces a pale, straw-yellow wine with pronounced acidity and a lean, mineral-driven body. Typical tasting notes include green apple, lemon pith, white flowers, and a distinctive almond note on the finish that's almost a fingerprint for the grape — if you taste a wine with that faint bitter-almond edge alongside high acid and citrus fruit, cortese is a reasonable first guess even blind.

It's typically vinified in stainless steel to preserve freshness and acidity, though a small number of producers experiment with skin contact or light oak aging to add texture — these bottlings tend to show more weight and a rounder mouthfeel while keeping the grape's core citrus-and-almond identity intact.

Cortese vs. Pinot Grigio vs. Sauvignon Blanc
Cortese gets compared most often to Pinot Grigio, since both are Italian, both are light-bodied, and both show up on the same "crisp white" section of a restaurant list. But they're meaningfully different wines once you taste them side by side:

Grape
Origin
Typical Body
Acidity
Signature Notes

Cortese
Piedmont, Italy
Light
High
Green apple, lemon pith, almond finish

Pinot Grigio
Northeast Italy
Light
Medium-high
Pear, lime, subtle stone fruit

Sauvignon Blanc
France/New Zealand/global
Light-medium
High
Grapefruit, gooseberry, herbaceous

The easiest way to describe the difference to a tasting group: Pinot Grigio tends to be softer and more neutral, Sauvignon Blanc brings a louder, more herbaceous punch (especially from New Zealand), and cortese sits between them in intensity but has that unmistakable almond-finish signature neither of the others carries. Pouring all three blind and asking people to spot the almond note is a genuinely effective way to teach a group how to identify a wine by a single distinguishing trait.

Food Pairings
Cortese's high acid and restrained fruit make it one of the more genuinely versatile food wines in the Italian white category, which is exactly why it became Genoa's go-to bottle. It's a natural match for:

- Raw and lightly cooked seafood — oysters, crudo, and simple grilled fish let the wine's acidity and minerality do the work without competing.
- Pesto and Ligurian herb-forward dishes — cortese and pesto alla genovese are a genuinely regional pairing, and the wine's acid cuts through the olive oil and basil cleanly.
- Fried foods — the grape's acidity resets the palate the same way a squeeze of lemon would, making it a strong match for fritto misto or other fried seafood.
- Fresh, mild cheeses — burrata or a young pecorino won't overwhelm the wine's more subtle profile the way an aged, funky cheese would.

Running a Cortese Tasting for a Group
Cortese is a strong pick for a corporate tasting precisely because almost no one in the room will have heard of it, even people who've had Gavi without registering the grape behind it. That unfamiliarity, paired with a genuinely distinctive tasting marker (the almond finish), makes for one of the more satisfying "I can actually taste that" moments you can build into a blind flight.

A strong format pairs cortese blind against Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc, has the group try to identify each wine by its signature trait, then reveals the answers and talks through why each grape tastes the way it does — climate, winemaking choices, and regional identity. Closing with a small seafood or pesto pairing shows the wine doing what it was actually built for.

That kind of structured discovery is exactly what we build into The Wine Voyage's programming. Our Blind Tasting Competition runs on the same format — give a group unfamiliar wines and a clear framework for identifying them — and we build custom Italian and regional-grape flights for teams that have already worked through the standard Chardonnay-and-Cabernet lineup.

Common Questions
Is cortese the same as Gavi? Not exactly — cortese is the grape, Gavi is the wine (and specific DOCG region) made from it, similar to how Chablis is a wine made from Chardonnay. Nearly all cortese you'll encounter is labeled as Gavi.

Does cortese age well? Most cortese is made to drink young and fresh within two to three years, though top-tier Gavi di Gavi bottlings from serious producers can develop more texture and complexity with five or more years in bottle.

What's a good substitute if I can't find cortese? Pinot Grigio or a lighter, less herbaceous Sauvignon Blanc are the closest stylistic matches, though neither fully replicates the almond-finish signature that makes cortese distinctive.

Bringing a Cortese Tasting to Your Team
The Wine Voyage builds guided wine tastings — including lesser-known, conversation-starting grapes like cortese — into corporate events for teams of any size, fully catered and facilitated at your venue. It's a strong choice for teams that have already done the standard Chardonnay-and-Pinot-Grigio tasting and want a genuine discovery moment instead. We've run tasting programs for organizations including the Carter Center, Sazerac, and GoFundMe.

For more wine guides, see our guides to Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, and Italian wine. If you're planning a group tasting event, check out how to host a blind wine tasting and wine tasting games for groups.

Further Reading
For more on cortese and Italian white wine regions, see Wine Folly's guide to Italian wine and Jancis Robinson's coverage of Piedmont wine. https://thewinevoyage.net/?p=25026