Grape varieties in GREAT100 Italy 2023

Ciao everyone!

This is the second in our educational video on Italian wines and grapes that we are launching along with the preparations for the upcoming Great 100 Terroir Wineries and Wines of Italy show this July 8 and 9 in Shanghai, at the St.Regis Hotel.

Italy has over 500 wine grapes officially recognized and registered (in fact, now closing in fast to 600!) but many hundreds and possible thousands still lie unrecognized and forgotten.

In this very short video, I wished to place the accent on just how many and how different Italy’s many grape varieties are and hence ho different the wines can be as well. Friuli Venezia Giulia’s Picolit gives wonderful sweet wines (actually, though they are much rarer, fantastic  classically dry ones too) and they could not be anymore different than the sweet wines made with Moscato Bianco (grown everywhere in Italy, in all 20 regions), Moscato d’Alessandria (more usually called Zibibbo in Italy, it grows mostly in Sicily) and Malbo Gentile (typical of Emilia-Romagna), for example. Well, let me tell you, Italian wine can get pretty complicated sometimes, and I understand that just the names of those four grapes can confuse people and be hard to remember (or the regions where they grow, for that matter). So imagine the wines, especially when people really have never had a chance to taste them regularly. But you know what? Trust me, even a wine beginner will be able to recognize that Malbo gives  a completely different sweet wine from the other three: if for no other reason, because it’s a red grape, while the other three are white grapes.

All kidding aside, the opportunities by which to make exciting new discoveries in wine are always just around the corner, in Italy. Most people know of Nebbiolo, and the differences between Barolo and Barbaresco. But what about the basic differences between three different Barbera wines such as Barbera d’Alba, Barbera d’Asti and Barbera del Monferrato? And what about the many Dolcetto wines out there? And do you know just how great Grignolino wines can be when you get one made by a really talented producer? Have you ever tried the gorgeous, lively, fresh white wine made with the Spergola grape? Or the slightly more lime-accented white wine made with Verdeca, once reduced to making vermouth and now instead increasingly used to make good every day fresh white wines that are very food-friendly? Or a very good Rosato (Rose’) made with Negroamaro? Yes, the fun never ends when it comes to Italian wines.

This video is just an antipasto to digging deeper into a complex if fascinating subject: not even, it’s actually so short that rather than an antipasto, it’s more like an amuse-bouche. It is meant to wet your appettite, to get you interested in knowing more about Italy’s many unique wines made from just as unique grape varieties. Here at the TerroirSense Wine Review we will be writing plenty of articles on this subject, along with all our usual and/or upcoming new coverage of the wines of France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, New Zeland, South Africa, the USA, Canada and much more, so stay tuned. Cheers!