Ronco del Gnemiz sits on top of the Rosazzo hill in Friuli's Colli Orientali, near Udine, where Augustinian monks were making wine around the turn of the last millennium and the Abbazia di Rosazzo still anchors the ridge. The Palazzolo family bought the estate in the 1960s, and Serena Palazzolo remade it in the 1990s around responsible farming and single-site precision; she runs it now with her sons and her husband, the winemaker Christian Patat. The vineyards lie on Friuli's signature ponca of marl and sandstone, sheltered from the north by the Alps and cooled by sea breezes off the Adriatic, a combination that lends the whites their saline lift and long acidity. Every parcel is farmed and vinified on its own.

This is chardonnay from the estate's Rosazzo slopes, where the ponca is threaded with clay and limestone. Ronco is the Friulian word for a terraced hillside, and this is unmistakably hillside fruit, ripe from the strong light on the slope yet drawn fine and long. The dedication in its name follows a house habit of honoring the people woven into the estate's story.

In the cellar it follows the estate's manner: gentle whole-cluster pressing, fermentation on the lees in barrel, restrained oak, and no malolactic to keep the fruit sharp. Expect white peach and yellow apple lifted by lemon and a thread of Rosazzo salinity, with blanched almond and crushed stone underneath and a long, cool close.