Italy
Definition - What does Italy mean?
Italy is a European peninsula-shaped country bordered by France to the northwest, Switzerland to the north, and Austria to the northeast.
Italian wine with its rich and diverse history dates back more than 2000 years. Italy is wildly popular for the variety of grapes of different regions and its flagship wine region and styles: Tuscany known for Chianti, Piedmont is famous for Moscato d’Asti , and Veneto for Prosecco, Soave, and Pinot Grigio.
Due to consistency and high quality, these particular wines can be found all over the world. With the country shaped like a boot, one of Italy’s vast peninsulas extends over into the Mediterranean and topographically favored, vineyard plantations range from sea-level eastern Emilia Romagna to the alpine Aosta Valley. It is believed that there are over 2,000 varieties of grapes that can be found in Italy.
WineFrog explains Italy
Italy is considered to be one of the largest producers of wine in volumes. To keep up with the increasing global competition in wine production, the Italian government has quality assurance appellation systems for wine classification and labeling. This consists of three-tier quality hierarchies with over 500 DOCG, DOC and IGT titles. DOCG is the highest classification for Italian wine, DOC covers every tradition of wine style, and IGT focuses mainly on the region of the origin.
Italy is divided into 20 administrative regions, and the most prominent wine regions, in terms of quality and quantity, are Tuscany, Piedmont and Veneto. Although Tuscany is predominantly known for its Chianti, for wine connoisseurs, Brunello and Vino Nobile are considered to be premium options. The Piedmont region is much respected for Barolo and Barbaresco. In addition to the vast production of Prosecco, Soave, and Pinot Griogio in the Veneto region, it also produces one the world’s richest and finest wine, Amarone della Valpolicella.
With increased global competition in wine production, the French and Spanish wines are considered to be rivals for the Italian wine production in terms of quality, volume and popularity.
