If you love exploring new wine styles, meet this Italian classic with an Aussie flavour 🌿. We’re introducing our first-ever Hunter Valley Fiano, part of the Single Suitcase Italian Varieties Collection.
Winemaker Brett and Sam crack open this vibrant white — grown in Broke, late-harvested, and crafted in both tank and old French oak. Expect fresh pear, melon, green apple, and a subtle waxy texture that makes Fiano refreshing yet age-worthy.
And because wine is always better with food, we’ve paired this Fiano with a creamy Seafood Risotto (Risotto alla Pescatora) 🍤 — straight from our Laureti family recipe book Cook Like an Italian. Download it free below and cook along with Wendy!
This year’s Single Suitcase collection features four Italian varietals. Four family recipes. One suitcase. Discover the new taste of Hunter Valley.
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🕒 Timestamps (4:27 runtime)
0:00 – Welcome: Italian Single Suitcase Series
0:20 – Why Fiano? Our first white varietal release
0:50 – Hunter Valley vineyard origins (Broke)
1:30 – Winemaking: tank vs barrel ferment
2:15 – Tasting notes: pear, melon, green apple, waxy texture
3:10 – Why Fiano is a crowd-pleaser 🍷
3:40 – Perfect food pairing: Seafood Risotto 🍤
4:10 – How to try + cookbook details
🔑 Key Takeaways
✅ Fiano is an Italian white varietal with freshness + texture
✅ Our first Hunter Valley-grown Fiano release
✅ Crafted with tank + oak ferment for balance
✅ Tastes of pear, melon, apple, subtle waxy finish
✅ Pairs perfectly with seafood risotto or creamy pasta
✅ Part of the Single Suitcase Italian Varieties Collection
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This is our single suitcase Italian series. We’ve got Hunter Valley Faniano. This is actually our fourth release of our Italian wines. And uh we thought pretty good opportunity to open some bottles and see what they taste like and yep, see how they’re looking, tell you a bit of history about these wines and these varieties. Yeah, as you know, we’ve made a couple of Italian varieties in the past and they’ve just flown out the door because people love these new varieties, this new wave style of wine making. And for the first time ever, we’re releasing a Italian white wine, which is really exciting. This is something that Frank and Wendy have been asking us about for a little while now. So, this is what we would like to introduce you as our brand new single suitcase Fano. Now, grown in the Hunter Valley, importantly, so with all of our single suitcase range wines, the varieties, they originated in Italy, uh, but they’re all grown here in Australia. Uh, and this wine is the first Hunter Valley Italian variety that we’ve had a crack at here at Sadless Creek. And let’s see what it looks like, Yeah, I mean, straight off the bat, colors cracking. You expect that nice light green and gold sort of character. Classic Aussie colors on the piano. The nose, beautiful. You get that um that melon, that pear. It’s fresh. It’s bright. You can already tell it’s going to make your mouth water. So, the fruit for this wine uh came from a little vineyard out and broke. So in the Hunter Valley about 25 minutes or so from the winery here uh in Pulban. Now we treated this wine uh in a mixture of ways and the reason for this was we’ve never made Fano before and we wanted to have a bit of a play and see what we could do with this fruit. Um now importantly the vineyard that these grapes came off it’s quite a late ripening varietal and a late ripening vineyard. So it was by far the latest Hunter Valley white fruit to come into the winery. And what we did is we pressed it quite delicately. Uh put the freerun juice into tank for tank fermentation and maturation. And we took the pressings and put them into some old French oak barrels uh for fermentation and maturation um in that method. Now what we’ve ended up with, as said, a really bright, real sort of green apple fresh style of wine. It’s got that real seductive fresh fruit character. It’s this that tank ferment as we see with Hunter Valley semi on Hunter Valley vidello gives you this beautiful green tropical fruit character and it’s carried through into here but um Fiono is well known for being a barrel worthy wine as well much like Chardonnay and with that we are able to develop weight and complexity in the wine. You can taste it on the pallet. You have that fresh fruit character but there’s some density to it. There’s viscosity. It makes your mouth water. It’s um has this sort of waxiness to it that’s typical for this varietal. Now, the good thing about Fano, it’s perfect for pretty much everyone because it’s light and bright, but it also has some texture and weight. And it is something that you can age for a period of time as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it does fit all those brackets of white wine. If you want to have a real people pleaser wine, you want to pour semionello, shardonnet, any of the above, even rezling, this Fiona would fit the mark because it has just something for everyone, which is a really cool way to make a very interesting variety of wine. Like Brett said, this is our first time at having a go at it and we’re really stoked with how it’s turned out. It looks really good, very tasty, very happy. So this year with our single suitcase Italian range release, we’re bringing to you another version of our Italian uh cookbook and matching with all four of these wines. We have um some really fantastic uh Italian dishes. So with the Fano, what are we matching with the Yeah, so with the Fano, you want those uh that really nice creamy style of para. We’ve actually got a seafood risotto with that and that is beautiful. You know, the Fano acid cuts perfectly through that seafood and that cream. It goes immaculately. fresh muscles, you know, good quality seafood, um prawns, or get some really nice cuts of white fish for in that risotto um will look really quite um tasty. Now, if you’re anything like me, you may not be able to cook very well, so you might need some instructions. Grab a copy of our new cookbook. Uh also, jump on our socials and our website. Uh you’ll find some really cool videos on there um of Wendy showing us how to cook up and plate those dishes. Download a free copy of the recipe book. All of the details on how to do that are in the description below.
Dining and Cooking