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Vespaiolo is a white-wine variety grown mainly in the Veneto wine region of northeastern Italy. Its most famous vinous incarnation is as Breganze Torcolato, a sweet wine made around the town of Breganze, at the foot of the Vizentine Alps.

The Vespaiolo grape is perhaps the most obvious example of a variety best suited to sweet wine production. The naturally intense acidity of its must makes dry wine styles almost unapproachably tart, as the grapes are too light in body and too aromatically subdued to justify the overbearing tang. However, when used to make to make sweet dried-grape wines like Torcolato, Vespaiolo can produce wines with an ideal sugar/acid balance. 

It is only once the sugar levels are at their highest that the grapes are picked, dried out passito style and made into sweetly spiced, honeysuckle-scented nectar. The name Vespaiolo is believed to come from the Italian word for wasp, a reference to the insects that buzz around the grapes on hot early autumn afternoons as they soar to full late-harvest ripeness.

Torcolato was once made from a combination of Vespaiolo, Garganega and Tocai (now named Tai to avoid confusion with the famous sweet wines of Tokaj). The modern Breganze DOC laws state that any wine bearing the title Torcolato must be 100-percent Vespaiolo.

Synonyms include: Bresparola, Uva Vespera.

Food matches for Vespaiolo include:

• Pesche al vino bianco (peaches sautéed in white wine)
• Coconut milk jelly
• Cinnamon-spiced rice pudding