(WSJ) - Once the top-selling imported wine in America, Frascati fell out of favor with drinkers as quality declined. But a small group of producers is making this crisp, value-oriented white interesting again.

THE SO-CALLED “WINE of the popes,” Frascati is said to have once flowed from the fountains of Rome to celebrate the inaugurations of two particular pontiffs, Clement Xand Innocent X, in the 17th century. The Italian white wine, no longer in favor, could perhaps use a papal endorsement today.

Frascati’s popularity with Americans peaked almost 30 years ago with Fontana Candida, the brand that became synonymous with this light-bodied, quaffable wine. Introduced to the U.S. market in 1974, Fontana Candida Frascati, from Lazio, Italy, was one of the top-selling imported wines in America by 1989, with 322,000 cases sold a year, according to a spokesperson for Banfi Wines, Fontana Candida’s importer. Today’s figures are much more modest: About 60,000 cases were sold in the U.S. last year.

The success of Fontana Candida’s mass-produced Frascati was a boon to the brand but a bane to higher-quality producers such as Fabrizio Santarelli, of Castel de Paolis, in the venerated Frascati subzone of Castelli Romana. Vintners started to focus on quantity, Mr. Santarelli said, and “the prestige and quality of the wine went slowly down.”

Compounding the issue, most Frascatis are produced not by small wineries but by cooperatives that buy grapes from local growers. Growers had an incentive to increase their output, which led to a focus on high-yielding but characterless grapes like Trebbiano—and a further decline in quality.

At the same time, the quality of white wines from other regions in Italy, such as Friuli, Sardinia and Campania, took a steady upward turn, and drinkers soon turned to wines like Falanghina, Pinot Grigio and Vermentino instead.