Sep 25 2009
Opening the Door to the World of Italian Wines
Combining wine with all kinds of food is a national feature of Italian people. They just can’t imagine how we can eat any meal without so delicious drink as wine?
Italy is in the list of Old World wine countries cause for centuries of wine making history. But only in the last century Italian people started to worry about the taste and flavour of their wine this is connected with the beginning of exporting their wine brands to other countries of the world.
If you want to find the meaning in the label of Italian wine prepare that it will be difficult, but interesting. The wine label can tell you a lot or simply just nothing about the bottle of Italian wine in your hand.
Italians named their wines sometimes according to the name of the region, where vineyards are situated (for example Soave or chianti wine), sometimes according to the grapes sort (such types as Pinot Grigio or Barbara).
Sometimes wine got its name because once somebody called it so, in this case wine gets some folk painting, as, for examples, we can name such wine type as “Est! Est! Est!”. Off cause you can listen to a lot of interesting stories how the name to it was given, but nobody knows the truth how it was.
If you find good sounding wine labels such as “Summus” or something like that, you can leave your hopes to find the meaning in it. This name is nothing more than good marketing step. Somebody thought it sounds good and they labeled it in that way, but these names of wine appear recently, so you can succeed in recognizing them by the time they were made.
So now you understand all difficulties in reading italian wine label and finding even a little meaning in it. But there is a small hope for you on the top of practically all bottles of wine in Italy, there are some general designations. And only four main types of inscriptions you can find there.
1) If you find abbreviation “DOC” for Italian “Denominazione di Origine Controllata”, than you can take a deep breathe, cause in the bottle you will find exactly what was written on the label. And if you can under
stand the label of Old World wines you will know what wine to buy.
2) Abbreviation “DOCG” shouldn’t be confused with previous, letters’ meaning for first three ones coincide and the last “G” is for “e Garantita”. Purchasing wine with such designation can guarantee that all Italian traditions of winemaking and making choice in grapes from ancient times to nowadays were used in this drink.
3) Looking at “IGT” inscriptions for “Indicazione Geografica Tipica” means that this wine they could make anywhere. You can be sure if it’s a quality and excellent wine but it was made not according to traditional technology or include not ordinary sort of grapes.
4) If you look at designation “Vino da Tavola” and you think “I want to try real Italian wine” then just run away from there, cause it is not the example of good Italian wine, it is just table wine and nothing interesting.
Hope all our recommendations will help you not to get lost in the magic world of Italian wines, enjoy drinking good wine!
