The Italian abroad wine blog is my wine blog and diary. I founded Italyabroad.com in 2003 and have been living abroad for almost 20 years and this blog is a collection of my thoughts mainly about Italian wine and food, but also wine and food in general. I come from an Italian wine making family and got acquainted with wine at a very early age, but I don't just love Italian wine, I love any good wine and enjoy plenty of it, as well as good food and travelling, and often my posts include a bit of everything.
To help you understand Italian wines, we have designed a series of Italian wine regions maps featuring DOC and DOCG wines showing the origins and the grapes making your favourite Italian wines. I also wrote a post on the Italian wine appellation system explaining and demystifying the Italian wine classification system and what it really means for Italian wine lovers and wine drinkers in general.
Lastly, we have a Youtube channel where you can watch me tasting some of our wines and answer your questions about Italian wines and grapes, from the real meaning of DOC to what is an orange wine.
Hope you enjoy reading this wine blog and please get in touch if you have any question.
Andrea
Christmas is around the corner and for us Italians, it is a very important day and time of the year. Not only because of its religious meaning, but also because of what will happen on the day or better, the days. Our Christmas celebrations start on the 24th and finish on the 26th of December and during these3 days, with plenty of food and wine and we will rarely leave the table, it will be a three days eating marathon.
The magazine Which has recently published the result of a survey about supermarkets' promotions and the result were, at least for me, not surprising. What they found out is that in plenty of cases, if not in all, the real discount was always different from the one highlighted, sometime none at all.
I constantly receive plenty of emails from wine sellers, I guess the moment someone notices that I import and sell wine, they see me as a potential buyer and therefore add my name to their mailing list and I receive emails from all over the world, not only UK based businesses.
Last night, like many other people, I watched Dispatches on Channel 4 and if before watching it I thought that they would have brought some truth and light about the wine industry, at the end of the program I realised that they only damaged a few producers and brands.
Yesterday I went to see one of my clients and he showed me the list of the best Italian wines according to Tim Atkin. The Guardian and The Observer are publishing a wines of the world guide featuring a selection of wines for all major countries that Tim chose according this year performance at the International wine challenge.
Here we are, once again, is harvesting time. To be completely honest, the harvest has started around the 15th of August for the white wines in the southern regions whilst the red wines and the northern regions are starting now and will finish toward the end of September
Wine spectator recently gave the Excellence award to an italian restaurant that does not exist. Robin Goldstein, wine critic, in an attempt to prove the lack of any foundation behind many food and wine awards, entered to the Wine Spectator award of excellence a restaurant that does not exist and won.
I recently wrote a letter to the editor of the magazine Taste Italia because in the magazine, their wine writer, Brian St Pierre, always review Italian wines from supermarkets. I find this unusual; I have to admit that the majority of wine writers do exactly the same, reviewing the same wines from the same retailers. I think wine writers should go beyond supermarkets, do the extra mile and discover unseen wines and grapes and not keep writing vintage after vintage about the same wine from the same shop sometime even giving incorrect information.
Recently during one of our wine tasting, one of attendees who come regularly, came to the tasting with a few bottles of wines in a Mark & Spencer shopping bag. At the end of the tasting, when everyone had left, with his wife sitting next to him, he asked if I had a few more minutes because he wanted to talk to me.
I was recently asked to write an introduction about Italian wines and give a few tips when buying them, let me know what you think. Interested in Italian wines but lost when looking for them in a supermarket shelf? Buying Italian wines is becoming increasingly more and more difficult, but before giving you tips on what to look for, a few things should be said about making wine in Italy.
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