italian wine

Torre dei Beati is a winery in Loreto Aprutino, a charming hilltop town in central Italy's Abruzzo region. In 1999, Fausto Albanesi and his wife Adriana inherited a small parcel of family vineyards, sparking a shared passion that changed their lives. At the time, winemaking offered a creative escape from their day jobs, with Fausto employed as an engineer and Adriana as an accountant.

Their journey towards full-time wine production spanned 17 years, and today, Torre dei Beati produces some of Abruzzo's most noteworthy, terroir-reflective wines. The winery's 52 acres of native, organically-farmed grapes are planted between 800 and 1,000 feet above sea level and about 15 miles from the Adriatic...

Chianti Classico, one of Italy's most prestigious wine regions, announced on July 5th, 2023, that the Italian Ministry of Agriculture has officially approved its Additional Geographical Units (UGA) classification system.

The Chianti Classico appellation now encompasses 11 distinct areas, whose names—San Casciano, Greve, Montefioralle, Lamole, Panzano, Radda, Gaiole, Castelnuovo Berardenga, Vagliagli, Castellina, and San Donato in Poggio—can be included on the bottles' front labels, starting with the 2020 vintage.

In June of 2021, the proposal to subdivide Chianti Classico's territory received unprecedented approval from its wine producers, with an overwhelming 97% casting their votes in its favor. Following a two-year wait for government approval, the region's labels can now aptly convey the remarkable diversity of its land.

Aiding Consumers

The UGA classification is based on various factors, including physical, environmental, and human. It mirrors practices seen in other renowned wine regions like Burgundy, with its AOCs (Appellations d'Origine Contrôlée), and Barolo with its MGAs (Menzione Geografica Aggiuntive). Through these systems, consumers can connect the dots between a wine's intricate nuances—aromas, colors, and flavors—and its delineated territory.

Specific to Chianti Classico, wine buyers can now make informed purchasing decisions by understanding, for instance, that wines from Panzano will exhibit a darker hue and fuller body than those from Lamole. 

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Grape Collective talks with Oscar Arrivabene about the history of the Domenico Clerico estate and the impact of the Barolo Boys with regard to traditional versus modern styles of Barolo.

Villa Venti was founded in 2002 by Mauro and Davide Giardini, and its vineyards are planted solely with native Romagna varieties. The winery is certified organic and follows biodynamic methods.

Joško Gravner is a revered winemaker in the Collio hills of the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, on the border of Slovenia. Considered a pioneer of the modern-day orange wine movement, he follows an ancient, low-intervention winemaking style, producing uniquely characterful wine.

Grape Collective talks with Marco Nicolosi of Barone di Villagrande about the family's unique place in the evolution of the Etna wine region and the particular suitability of the terroir to producing elegant expressions of Etna Bianco.

John was simply looking for some drinkables – inexpensive, easy-drinking wines we could pop open and enjoy without much thought. He went to a trusted store’s online site, narrowed the search to 2019 and 2020 – we wanted these to be young and lively – put in the maximum price and sorted from least expensive. His goal was to buy a mixed case so we’d get a discount.

“A valley surrounded by tall and fearsome mountains'' is how Leonardo Da Vinci described the region of Valtellina in his Codex Atlanticus. Da Vinci (apparently a clandestine w...

Even though Calabria is one of the oldest wine regions in the world, it has had an obscured past unbeknown to much of the world. Over the past few decades, Librandi has been one of the few flickering lights that has illuminated Calabrian wine from the dark past.

"One time in Collioure, our grower had paid a diver to go bring up sea urchins, and they had a whole box of sea urchins. So he stood there and shucked the sea urchins and drank Collioure Blanc." Lyle Railsback on some of the magical moments working for Kermit Lynch