Beer Styles

Italian Grape Ale, or IGA for short, is a beer to which grapes or grape must are added. It originates in Italy, and the BJCP has listed it as its own style since 2015. The base can be a pale, red, or dark beer; what matters is that the grape comes through without the beer turning into wine.

What does it taste like? Depending on the grape variety, notes of berries, dried fruit, or blossom, with acidity and a light tannic edge on the finish. A Moscato beer comes across as floral and sweetish on the nose, a Nebbiolo beer more austere and spicy. There are no fixed numbers here, since base beer and grape variety are freely chosen; every beer of this type is its own case. Ask for an IGA in Alba, Bra, or Turin and you'll never get quite the same thing twice — and that's exactly the appeal. The style calls the Langhe home, but breweries well beyond Piedmont are now making these beers too.

The distinction from a "wine beer" matters: an IGA remains a beer, with malt and yeast providing the body and the grape serving only as an ingredient. The drink only becomes wine once grape juice makes up the bulk of it. To distinguish it from fruit beers like Belgian kriek, origin matters too: IGA is an Italian creation.

The region's second face is Menabrea's pale lager, classified internationally as an International Pale Lager: lean, golden, lightly dry, with an especially light body thanks to the corn. It sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from the experimental craft scene, and precisely because of that, it shows the breadth of Piedmont.