Italian Wine
Related Articles:
Italian White Wine
Italian Red Wine
Wine of Northern Italy
Wine of Northern Italy
Making an Italian wine guide that covers the whole of the
country in just one web page is almost an impossible task.
There is hardly an inch of Italy that couldn't ripen
grapes suitable for wine, and consequently there are a
myriad of classified regions producing a diverse array of
wines, some of which are rarely seen outside of Italy.
Consequently, this guide to
Italian wine focuses just on
the country's most prominent wines. I deal with each Italian
wine region in turn, from the expensive and age-worthy wines
of Barolo in the north, to the bargain wines of the south.
But first, a note on the Italian wine classifications.
Italian Wine
Classification
The classification system for
Italian wine
mirrors that
for French. Italian wine is generally classified:
- Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC)
or
- or Denominazione di Origine Controllata et Garantita
(DOCG).
These levels correspond with the Appellation (d'Origine)
Contrôlée wines of France, the DOCG wines supposedly with an
extra degree of quality.
The fairly recent qualification of Indicazione Geografica
Tipica (IGT) corresponds to France's Vin de Pays wines,
whereas the lowest category for Italian wine, Vina da Tavola,
accounts for the table wines. Unusually this latter category
has in the past included some of Italy's top wines, as
quality conscious wine makers were excluded from the DOC or
DOCG categories because of the grapes or wine making
practices they used.
The
Italian wine
region where these latter two have been
most concentrated is around Chianti in Tuscany, the wines
frequently referred to as 'super-Tuscans'. The relaxation of
the DOC and DOCG regulations in 1992, together with the
creation of the IGT category, was intended to bring the
winemakers behind these 'super-Tuscans' back into the fold.
In general it hasn't worked.
Related Articles:
Italian White Wine
Italian Red Wine
Wine of Northern Italy
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