National registry code number: 135 (also listed at 98 as Greco Bianco and at 136 as Malvasia di Sardegna.

In brief: ‘Wine from the Malvasia di Lipari grape variety appears to have been produced since at least the C1st BCE. In the modern era Carlo Hauner made wine from it on the (Lipari or Eolian) islands [Lipari, Stromboli, Vulcano, Salina, Panarea, Filicudi, Alicudi], off the northern coast of Sicily, from 1963, the wine being called Malvasia delle Lipari to avoid confusion with [the Malvasia di Lipari wine grape] and wine. [These vineyards had been abandoned says Ian D’Agata in NY on Tuesday 27th June 2017.] In the 1980s Hauner’s work saw renewed interest in the Malvasia di Lipari grape and its wine. Logistics (the small scale of the islands) meant the wine had to be bottled on the mainland, and there was a lack of good enough nursery material – hence Malvasia di Candia Aromatica found its way onto the islands. Malvasia di Candia Aromatica is a fine variety but it was not suited to the terroir here and is not as deep or complex as the Malvasia di Lipari,’ (D’Agata, 2014).

Look-alikes, not: ‘Malvasia di Lipari and the aforementioned Malvasia di Candia Aromatica look very different (see ‘physiology’, below). Malvasia di Lipari has a very scrawny [loosely packed, good therefore for air drying], elongated, cylindrical (rarely cylindrical-conical) bunch, and small, round berries with thin skins. There is only one clone, the VM-4.

Controversy: A 2006 study by Crespan et al indicated–somewhat controversially it seems–Malvasia di Lipari is identical to Sardinia’s Malvasia di Sardegna, Calabria’s Greco Bianco–which in their study the researchers called Greco Bianco di Gerace, Croatia’s Malvasia Dubrovacka, Madeira’s Malvasia Cândida, and Spain’s Malvasia di Sitges (Malvasía Rosada of the Canary Islands and Malvasia Cândida Roxa are two red-berried mutations of this latter

Italian Wine Unplugged (Positive Press, 2017), p.59