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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
Restaurants’ wine lists vary from very short to hundreds of pages, making the task of choosing a wine sometime challenging, a challenge that, whenever I'm out with friends or family, usually falls on me - to find a wine that will please everyone. I may be a wine expert but certainly don’t know every wine or region
We are all aware that Great Britain has an obesity problem, still, every year we give the award for the cheapest supermarket ignoring that what drives obesity is the cheap food. Let's shift our focus from finding the cheapest supermarket to recognizing and awarding quality food and its ingredients. At Italyabroad.com we stand with Hippocrates “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food”, live a happier and healthier life simply buying healthy, proper food.
Education is crucial. For example, I often stress the importance of serving wine at the correct temperature. Serving wine too cold can mask flaws, so wine drinkers should ensure their wine is served at the right temperature to fully appreciate its complexity. A friend of mine, who works at a local restaurant, recently received a complaint about a Pinot Grigio Rosé tasting "acidic" when served at the proper temperature. However, the same wine, served at 4 degrees Celsius, was considered delicious.
However, I also tasted wines I did not like. Some were the result of winemaking decisions I disagreed with, but there was one winery in particular whose wines I found particularly poor. They were marketed as "natural," which confirmed that people still drink bad wine simply because it's labelled as such. I have previously written on my blog about poorly made natural wines at the start of the “natural wine” trend and the difficulty of finding good ones. I believe that ultimately, wine should be a pleasure to drink, not a medicinal chore, independently on how they are obtained, but these wines were different, they would not fit the definition of “natural wine” as it is now intended.
Creating 134 subzones risk further diluting the brand and worsening confusion among wine drinkers, many of whom, still associate Italian sparkling wine with Prosecco and are unwilling to pay a premium for Italian alternatives. When faced with a choice between a bottle of Franciacorta or Champagne, based on my experience made of tastings and conversations with thousands of wine drinkers, 7 out 10 still opt for Champagne, despite not knowing how it is made, often choosing it solely for its reputation
As you might be aware, my enthusiasm for extra virgin olive oil knows no bounds, and the more I learn about it, the deeper my passion grows, leading to our range of extra virgin olive oil getting bigger and bigger. I love olive oil because there are plenty of similarity with wine, even more, when made by small producers and one of them, during my visit to Olio Capitale in Trieste said something that really struck me, I never thought of olive oil like this
Is natural wine a distinct category of wine, superior, over conventional wines? Is natural wine, by definition, a better wine, independently of how it tastes? Should we choose natural wine over conventional wine? These were only some of the questions that loomed in my mind after attending a natural wine fair in Italy, an event unlike any other I had attended before.
Finding the right wine and food pairing not only is the epitome for any wine and food lover, it takes the dining experience to another level. But before we start talking about pairings, it is important to consider the characteristics of the food and wine individually. The general criteria for pairing wine and food follows two approaches: matching by agreement or matching by contrast.
Lets hope that 2024 will bring plenty of good Italian wine. My dad, when growing up, used to say to me “if you are going to get drunk, do it by drinking good wine, at least you won’t have headache the next morning”. My dad’s recommendation aside, less is better, and this applies to wine as well, drink less but drink better and more importantly enjoy your wine, sip it. Maybe this living cost crisis will help all of us to enjoy and appreciate more, whether wine or clothes.
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