Transcript
Hello, bonjour, and welcome to your new wine video. I’m your host, Julien Miquel, winemaker and wine writer from France. Today, I’m taking you on an overview of the things that you should know about Italian wine: what are the main stars and types that you should be looking out for to make the most of the astonishing and really delightful variety that comes out of arguably one of the most beautiful countries on earth.
The country that spread the wine culture all over Europe during Roman times, obviously, which in turn from there spread the wine culture all around the world. So because there is quite a bit to cover here, well, this is going to be a two part episode between this week and next. So we discuss all styles and all colors across the whole country. Here are the key points that you should know about Italian wine and the specific wine styles that are particularly interesting to taste from there. Let’s go.
Italy As a Wine Country
Italy is the biggest wine producing country in the world, full stop. And that’s ahead of France; Italy producing annually the equivalent of over 6.5 billion bottles of wine. So nearly one bottle for every human on the planet every year. And that’s because the country is virtually covered in vineyards from north to south. There is no Italian wine region that doesn’t make plenty of good wine. So beyond this impressive volume of wine, well Italy features a staggering variety of wine styles of all colors based on more indigenous grape varieties than any other nation, and way more than France for sure.
Even though the French grapes, obviously like chardonnay or the cabernet that we’ve talked about on this channel, are more famous and have been planted all around the world by now. As a contrast, Italian grapes, even the best ones like sangiovese or nebbiolo, just to name a couple, remain confidential outside of Italy. This means that while you may be able to find substitutes or alternatives to French wine in the form of cabernet sauvignon or pinot noir from many different countries, well, if you want to taste Italian grape or even an Italian style wine, well, you have to buy Italian wine.
So let’s dig into the Italian wine highlights by wine style and color and find the best Italy has to offer when it comes to white wines, red wine, sparkling wines and rosé wines as well. With this, hopefully everyone finds something of its taste to explore and enjoy.
Italy’s Best White Wines
Italy is certainly best known for its red wines, many of which are truly world class delights. It’s also very famous for extremely popular types of sparkling wines. But surely enough, they are also excellent white wines coming out of Italy. So their Pinot Grigio is the big name. It is the best seller as it is mass produced, especially around the region of Venice, and then broadly exported as a relatively affordable wine, often under the appellation that’s called Pinot Grigio della Venezie in particular.
But this popular style of pinot grigio white wine is certainly not the best, often a light and fruity style of quaffable wine. For white wines which have not only fruity characters, but also some balance in depth, look out for some of the classic historic wines like those of Gavi, Soave, Collio, or Orvieto for example. I find that Italian wines have the distinct advantage of pretty much always being crisp and dry and refreshing.
They are delicately fruity, sometimes a little bit floral, and pretty much always rather subtle and elegant, which makes them always refreshing, easy to enjoy, and very important for Italian culture and everyone else; they are food friendly. On top of that, well, they taste always a little bit different from what we usually have. They are not your usual common commodity chardonnay or sauvignon blanc, for example, but something else more unusual to our palate. By the way, I’ll link to all those wine types that are mentioned here in this video, in the video description, if you want to look them up afterwards.
Italian Sparklings (Spumantes)
Surprisingly enough, one could say, and I’m going to go ahead and say that Italy is the king country, the dominant country when it comes to sparkling wines in the world, at least if we speak volume of production as it produces very large amounts of sparkling wines.
So those in Italy are pretty much always made in the north of the country, well, because the south is simply too warm and too Mediterranean a climate for making crisp, refreshing bubbles. There are two main names when it comes to Italian sparkling wine: prosecco, which is a simple, refreshing style that now sells around the world even better than champagne, although arguably at a much lower price, well this is probably not arguable, but arguably at a much simpler refinement level also.
But prosecco is a true success story worldwide. It overtook champagne in terms of production volumes just a few years ago. So we’re speaking big, big volumes exported, available all around the world for those who know and enjoy the prosecco style, though, you should know that there are some very specific crus, very small areas that are making finer and very interesting examples. Those are small areas that make refined expressions of the unique glera grape that are used to make prosecco and those locales are Conegliano Valdobbiadene and also Asolo in particular.
The second obvious name as a famous type of Italian sparkling wine, well, is Moscato. Moscato is made from a very fruity and fragrant Muscat grape. Generally, those are quite sweet, with plenty of flavors of peach, apricot grapes, jasmine and honey. It’s a very popular style with younger generations and people that are quite new to wine, more generally speaking, because it tastes like sparkling fruit juice. Of course, the Italian Sparkling Moscato style has been copied or say emulated all around the world these days, with much Moscatos coming out of California, Australia as well now.
But genuine Italian Moscatos often come under the name Asti or Moscato d’Asti, some of which made by small producers. Those that are made really locally by small producers can be genuinely characterful. So look out for those.
Finally, it is little known outside of Italy’s borders—the Italians kind of keep the secret for themselves, but here I am telling you about it—there is in Italy a small production of super premium sparkling wines that can easily compare in quality and refinement to some of the best champagnes from France. These are called Franciacorta. Franciacorta wines are made in a very small area, again in the north of the country in a very specific terroir, a small patch of land where were deposited, a long time ago, sediments of an ancient glacier. On these very specific altitude vineyards are grown the same grapes as in champagne, namely chardonnay and pinot noir, that are made exactly the same way as champagne bubblies, and sometimes even better, because they are small producers that really want to surpass the established brands of champagne. So they do it extremely, extremely well, extremely precise craftmanship and winemaking technique. So I would certainly recommend trying a wine from there. Franciacorta is the name, so definitely look out for those as well.
And that’s going to be it for me today. Next week is part 2 of our Italian wine overview. We will look at the red wines from Italy as there are so many wonders that you should absolutely know about and taste. We will also talk about some Italian rosés and some delicious Italian sweet wines and other local specialty wines that can be very interesting to explore.
I hope you enjoyed today’s video and I will see you soon in the wonderful world of wine. Cheers. Salud, Santé.
