wine REGIONS

ITALY

More than 20 wine-making regions cover “the boot,” whose climate and landscape are ideal for wine production. Italy has twenty different wine-making regions, divided into four main geographic areas; Northern, Central, Southern, and the Islands

Long stereotyped as a producer of quantity over quality, known more for mediocre, wicker-wrapped bottles of Chianti than superior vintages, Italy is making great strides and winning the hearts of wine connoisseurs around the world.

Some regions, such as Piedmont and Tuscany, have been producing notable wines for decades, while areas like Sicily and Campania are relatively new players on the world wine scene.

The Northern Regions

Valle d’Aosta - Piedmont - Liguria - Lombardy - Trentino-Alto Adige - Veneto - Friuli Venezia Giulia

With the snow-covered Italian Alps as a backdrop and protector, the northern growing area of Italian wines is, at once, both autonomous and diverse. Warmed by the reflection of the sun off mountainsides and stone-walls, the terraces and valley floors provide a nurturing home for grapevines of many varieties. Each geographic region brings its own personality to the richness of the wines themselves.

The Central Region

Emilia-Romagna - Tuscany - Marches - Umbria - Latium - Abruzzi

The central area of Italy, the heart of the old Roman Empire, is home to some of the most popular Italian wines. Lambrusco, Verdicchio and the venerable Chianti all call this part of Italy home. Yet even here, ancient traditions have given rise to new efforts in winemaking as they constantly strive to improve.

The Southern Regions

Molise - Campania - Apulia - Basilicata - Calabria

The five regions that make up the southern area do not produce as much in quantity and variety of wines as are produced in the other regions. Yet the winemaking that goes on here dates from some of the earliest times and is considered among the most potent of the Italian wines. Much of the area is either rugged terrain or extensively forested; the very diversity of the geography adds to the unique quality of the wines made here.

The Island Regions

Sardinia - Sicily

Sicily and Sardinia, while part of Italy, have developed different cultures and wines, almost as if these two Mediterranean islands were independent entities. Both of them date their efforts at winemaking to distant antiquity. The result is a variety of wines with a fullness and flavour that reflect the diversity of the people and the land.

Regional names in Italy give much less of a clue to wine styles as they do, for example, in France. Bourgogne is basically about variations on the themes of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. A region like the Veneto makes light bubble whites, a whole gamut of dry red and white wines, massive port-like reds and dessert wines.

The most important common denominator in all this is grape variety. Nine times out of ten "What's it made of?" is the most useful question you can ask about an unfamiliar wine and the one which best helps you link wines and flavours. Italy grows all the global village varieties and if you are going for familiar sensations offers everything from good basic drinking to top international quality in both reds and whites. The local red varieties are numerous, strong on character, and arguably the best reason for drinking Italian wine today. Native white varieties are fewer and generally less imposing, which means you may have to look harder for worthwhile bottles.

DOC and DOCG

Complete Classification Listings at www.italianmade.com • Italian DOCG Wines • Italian DOC Wines • Italian IGT Wines eBOOKS at www.italianmade.com The wines of Italy© 1994 8 page PDF file; 700kb Download Now The wines of Italy © 2001 104 page PDF file; 1.7Mb Download Now! Note: viewing these documents requires Adobe Acrobat Reader

Wines made from designated varieties, grown in defined production zones have the right to use an official DOC (denominazione di origine controllata) wine name. DOCG (the "G" stands for garantita) is a limited category reserved for wines of outstanding quality and character - in practice it is not always so. Names generally correspond to either a variety (Lambrusco is a grape) or place name (Barolo is a village). There are more DOC/Gs than grapes on a vine, but you can get by with knowledge of the two or three dozen most important ones. The problem is that a significant number of the kind of wines you would like to know about either don't fit in the system because they use varieties which are not contemplated by the DOCs in the area where they are made, or because for commercial reasons producers choose not to use the DOC. The result is a plethora of very smart, disenfranchised estate wines with labels which give no indication of the contents of the bottle.