Understanding Italian Wines
Anni, amori e bicchieri di vino, nun se contano mai.
By Erin Henderson
Italy is vast and complex for when it comes to winemaking, and even more so for understanding it. And frankly, most wine enthusiasts I meet don’t have the time, or even the interest really, to go down rabbit holes deciphering slope angles of a vineyard or the DNA of a grape.
That’s why we developed Wine School, for people who just want to know whether Chianti is a grape or a place, not write a dissertation on it.
Luckily, you don’t necessarily need to understand the nuances of soil to enjoy what’s in your glass. But a little knowledge goes a long way to helping a wine get the wine you want – at a shop, at a restaurant, and selecting what might suit the mood and meal best.
Let’s start at the beginning.
As the largest producer of wine in the world, Italy makes wine in every corner of the country. There are 20 regions in total, ranging from the very hot climates, with pebbly beaches and sun worshippers in the south, to the cool, Germanic mountains filled with ski bunnies in the north. Each region grows different grapes, in different ways, to make different wines.
Each region’s wine production is governed by a set of laws known as the DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata), which is not dissimilar to France’s AOC (if that helps at all.) These laws, which can be confusing and incomprehensible in some cases, aim to regulate the grapes that are grown and how wines are produced.
Out of the 20 regions, the three leaders are Piedmont, in the northwest, butted up against the French border. The Veneto, home to Venice and Verona, with the green, soaring foothills of the Dolomites framing the sloping vineyards. And Tuscany, the dream destination of escapism everywhere, where the cypress trees lead the way to a charmed life under the Tuscan sun.
Of course, this is not to suggest that other regions, like the country’s culinary epicentre of Emilia-Romagna, just over the Apennines mountains from Tuscany, or Sicily, which is coming in red-hot for premium production wines as much as it is tourism post White Lotus fame don’t produce wines of value, it’s just that Piedmont, Tuscany, and Veneto, lead the charge for both quality and quantity.
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Is it a grape? Is it a place?
Pour yourself a big glass, this gets complicated. Truly, I rewrote this section four or five times trying to both inform and not overwhelm. But the fun, and the frustration, of learning about wine, is that it can be a bit of a labyrinth. And the reality of Italian wine is that there are so many moving parts, it’s impossible, even for those working in it, to ever understand the whole country fully. Still, let me try to offer an overview.
In Italy, wines can be named after a place, such as Chianti, Barolo, or Valpolicella. Or they can be named after the grape such as Pinot Grigio, Primativo, or Falanghina. Or they can be neither, such as Amarone, which is a type of wine (a big, bold red blend of the grapes Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara coming from the Veneto). Or they can be both, like Montepulciano, which is often the most confused, as it’s a region in Tuscany that makes a clone of Sangiovese for Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, as well as a grape that’s most famously grown in Abruzzo for Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.
Sorry.
It might be helpful to know the prepositions of d’, di, and della, can leave a clue. Amarone della Valpolicella, is a wine that comes from Valpolicella; Dolcetto d’Alba is the Dolcetto grape from Alba. It does get trickier with grapes like Nero d’Avola, (which means, “the black grape of Avola.”) Avola is a place in Sicily which is the grape’s home, but Nero d’Avola also does really well in surrounding regions like Puglia and Calabria.
Again, I’m really sorry.
DOC in Detail
I always joke that Italians can leave a road unpaved for a decade, and simply accept regular strikes in Rome that shut down the transit system, but nobody better mess with their food and drink.
The DOCG classification system, which is used for both food and wine, is a kind of quality pyramid that ensures various grapes and wine making techniques have been observed in the making of that wine.
In order of importance: DOCG, DOC, IGT, and Vino di Tavola are the rungs on the quality ladder. The rules surrounding each category vary from region to region, according to tradition and local interpretation, but just know that DOCG is the strictest, and generally identifies an historical area using traditional wine making techniques, and Vino di Tavola is the loosest in regulations which are generally the easy-going bistro wines you might buy for a few Euros in a trattoria. They’re not generally exported.
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Regions + Grapes
Most regions will produce several different styles of wine by a handful of different grapes, to varying degrees of impact and notoriety. Here is a quick list of Italy’s 20 regions, with their leading wines, broken down by how the world knows them. If the wines are a place name, the grape is in brackets.
Piedmont: Barolo (Nebbiolo), Dolcetto, Barbera, Moscato, Gavi (Cortese)
Veneto: Prosecco (Glera), Pinot Grigio, Amarone (Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara), Soave (Garganega), Bardolino (Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara), Valoplicella (Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara)
Tuscany: Chianti (Sangiovese), Brunello (Sangiovese clone), Super Tuscans (blends of indigneous and noble grapes)
Abruzzo: Montepulciano, Trebbiano
Alto Adige: Pinot Grigio, Lagrein, Schiava
Basilicata: Aglianico, Fiano
Calabria: Nerello Cappuccio, Nerello Mascalese
Campania: Aglianico, Fiano, Greco, Falanghina
Emilia-Romagna: Lambrusco, Trebbiano
Friuli: Pinot Grigio, Schioppettino
Lazio: Orvietto
Liguria: Vermentino
Lombardy: Franciacorta (traditional method sparkling made from Chardonnay, Pinot Bianco and Pinot Nero), Valtellina
Marche: Vermentino, Pecorino, Montepulciano
Molise: Trebbiano, Montepulciano
Puglia: Primtivo, Nero d'Avola
Sardinia: Cannonau (Grenache)
Sicily: Nero d'Avola, Frappato, Marsala, Grillo, Nero Mascalese, Carricante
Umbria: Sagrantino de Montefalco, Grechetto
Valle d'Aosta: Nebbiolo, Pinot Nero
