Bella Italia!

It's going to take some time to complete all the separate pages on this site for Italian wine regions. There are just so many of them. In fact, there's not much land not under vine in Italy!

Unfortunately not all of it is good wine - there's a large proportion - particularly in the southern regions - that's falls short of the mark in terms of quality. But it's also fair to say that most major wine producing countries are also guilty of overproduction of cheap, low quality wines.

However in the past decade or so, there's been a bit of a shift, and many areas of Italy have aimed to raise the bar in terms of quality wine standards.

Founded by the Greeks ...

The ancient Greeks called Italy "Oenotria" when they colonized the place.

It's a natural for wine production - with a spine of mountains running down the middle providing perfect aspects, and volcanic, gravelly clay and limestone soils. Most of the viticultural work's done by mother nature herself.

Complex Labels ...

Like France, Italian wine unfortunately falls in the category of undecipherable labelling with a multitude of names to ponder over.

You need a wine degree to know which is the name of the producer, the vineyard, the section of the vineyard, the style ... [Author's note: Wait ... I have one of those degrees, and I'm still baffled!]

It really does get confusing as to what the wine actually is, who made it, and where the grapes come from.

Italians are famous for their red winemaking. They do make some whites ... however, these turn out more on the crisp, dry side than showing any real fruity characters.

This too has been changing in recent years. They have developed quite distinctive characters of their own, eg Pino Grigio.

A Brief Overview of the History of theItalian Appellation System

The task of clarifying Italian wines fell to the country's government in the 1960's.

At this point in time, the Denominazione di Origine Controllata system was set up. Like France, the DOC sets rules on regional boundaries, yield levels and grape varietals which could be grown in a particular vineyard.

One might consider that such a set of rules would offer some form of consumer guarantee of exactly what they are drinking. Not necessarily. There continued to be many producers not quite following the guidelines.

Enter the DOCG, which gives its seal of approval as guarantee that thier rules were upheld. This is only awarded to seriously superior wines - eg Chianti's of excellence, and the likes of Brunello di Montalcino, Vino Nobile di Montelpulciano, Carmignano, Barbaresco ... to name just a few.

Unfortunately the DOC laws were far too lenient in terms of yield levels, and the wines just weren't doing anything in themselves to improve Italian wine. Ten years or so after the DOC rulings, many winemakers who knew better began bucking the system, and producing their own Vini da Tavola - which is a low-standing classification. This caused quite a fuss, as these wines were often considered far greater quality than those with higher DOC rankings.

These rebel winemakers were trying on new things; like experimenting with imported grape varieties, or mimicking viticultural practices from other countries.

Eventually, the situation had to be reviewed. In the early 1990's, a new category, IGT [Indicazione Geografica Tipica] was introduced for those breakaway wines that weren't given DOC qualification. Under this category, the place of origin and grape varietal used was allowed to be put on the bottle labels.

These days the IGT wine-list is something like four times the DOCG wine-list, and is dominated with southern wines.

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Italian Wine Regions:

Chianti Classico

Italian/English Wine Dictionary: