Italian wines today

I have noticed that Italian wines are becoming more and more rare, from supermarkets to newspaper wine pages. One of the reasons behind this is the difficulty in finding good producers as I have already mentioned in other posting. Another reason is that the wines that are available, bottled by the usual big companies that don't make good wine but have the resources to make their wines international, are pushing wine drinkers away from Italian wines making poor quality wines. I recently went back to Italy and was very surprised when I stopped in a supermarket, the equivalent of Tesco, and could not see any of the wines available from the supermarkets in the UK.

Supermarkets put pressure on winemakers, not just Italian, requesting a certain wine at a certain price and only big bottlers can respond and fulfil their requests. A suggestion I can give you, is to stay away from wines that are made by producers that seem to have vineyards all over Italy, from Sicily to Veneto. There are none.

On the other side, wine writers don't go the extra mile to find good Italian wines, they simply look in front of their eyes and if the wines are not there, then do not exist. Italy has a long history in making wine and in the last few years, is producing some outstanding wine, whether it is the rich, elegant, complex and structured one or the easy to drink, full of flavour, refreshing one. The problem for Italian wine is that because of all these poor quality wines available, wine drinkers prefer not to risk and buy a wine from a different country. I will invite you to try and don't give up after your first attempt and if you need any advice I am always available. In our quest for Italian wines, in a few weeks time we will be going to the Vinitaly and will bring back plenty of new wines that hopefully will find your approval, we have recently added Pecorino.