What is Italian Wine?
Recently, our Advanced Class students finished a seven week viaggio through the oftimes bewildering, but nonetheles fascinating, demimonde of Italian wine. Along the way they tasted, analyzed, and discussed dozens of wines representing eighteen of Italy’s twenty regions, from the obvious - Barolo - to the relatively obscure - Peleverga. The objective of this “by the glass” tour was to answer, if at all possible, the question “..what is Italian wine?”, a task they revisited at the final session.
The wines had been presented not only for their aesthetic and organoleptic merits, but also in the context of regional history, economics, geography, culture, and society. To learn of Italian wine divorced from these interdependent factors is to ignore millennia of viticultural heritage and Italy’s current and future position in the international wine community.
Among the concepts examined were the influence of tradition in winemaking; the natural and human elements involved in creating balance in wine; the effects of maritime and continental climates; terrain, site selection, and variations in soil composition; the impact of politics and economics on development and production; and perhaps most important, the role of the people of each region in defining their indigenous wine culture.
Not surprisingly (and, to be honest, thankfully) there was no consensus reached, no definitive measure as to whether there is such a thing as Italian Wine or merely wines from Italy. Although certain descriptors - authentic, rustic, genuine, unique - dominated the discussion, the one most frequently used was diversity, a word that captured the complexity of the original premise. Most agreed that the breadth and depth of the wines of Italy made it more difficult to frame a profile of them than, for example, California, Australia, or even France.
Maybe that is as it should be. A place where hundreds of native varietals can be found, where millions grow grapes and thousands produce wine should not be easily categorized. Someone once wrote that history is constant controversy, that there is no closure, an observation that can be applied to the study of wine in general. And fortunately for us, the most rewarding path to furthering one’s knowledge is to keep exploring - one glass at a time.
Comments
Leave a Reply
-
- Best of Philly
- Daily Wine News!
- Jamie Goode’s Blog
- The Wine Collector
- The Wine Investor
- Vinography
- Wine 101 - The Wine School of Philadelphia
- Wine Flair
- Wine for Dummies
- Wine Prices, Ratings, Reviews
The Wine School Today
The November Newsletter! http://aweber.com/b/23xGx # Follow the conversations on Twitter!
Online Wine?
Get connected to the Wine School online! From our popular wine rating & review newsletter to our 1/4 million wine-related contacts on Linkedin to our daily "Life at the Wine School" tweets. Its all yours, for free.
