Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [76]
Classico A geographical term referring to the historic heart and quality center of a particular growing region—such as Chianti Classico and Soave Classico.
Classico Superiore This implies grapes from the classico zone and a higher minimum alcohol content.
Fattoria (Fah-toh-REE-uh), Tenuta (Teh-NOO-tuh), Podere (POH-deh-reh), and Azienda Agricola (Ah-zee-END-uh Ah-GREE-coh-luh) These are words to describe estates that both grow grapes and make wine.
Cantina This is the Italian word for winery.
Vigna, Vigneto (VEEN-yuh, Veen-YETT-oh) These are words for vineyard, and are often seen on labels to designate a single-vineyard wine, meaning the grapes all came from one special vineyard plot, rather than many blended together, which is more common in Italy.
Confusing Wine Labels
You are familiar by now with the idea of place-names and appellation systems. So why, even within the parameters of the DOC system, do Italian wines and wine labels seem so inscrutable? My answer to the question is elaborate, because I have several theories, and I think all are accurate depending on the wine or region in question. Here they are:
Italians are fierce individualists. This alone explains a lot, such as why there are twenty separate wine regions, many of them often dramatically different from neighboring ones, in this very small country. And why, despite the commercial evidence that just a few grapes (the Big Six among them) rule the wine world in sales, there are literally hundreds of different grapes planted, most of which no one has ever heard of outside of Italy. For variety, it’s great. Anyone who has ever traveled to Italy has experienced the joy of discovering the local wine—after getting over the shock of not always finding what they thought were Italian standards (Chianti, Soave, and the like). Unfortunately, you can forget ever finding these local wines outside their home bases. Think of them as good excuses to go back to Italy!
20 ITALIAN WINE REGIONS
Abruzzo
Basilicata
Calabria
Campania
Emilia-Romagna
Friuli-Venezia-Giulia
Latium
Liguria
Lombardia
Marche
Molise
Piedmont
Puglia
Sardegna
Sicily
Trentino-Alto-Adige
Tuscany
Umbria
Valle d’Aosta
Veneto
Italians are an improvisational culture. Italian food is the ultimate example of this. The signature dish, pasta, adapts to what’s in season–tomatoes and basil in summer, mushrooms in fall, garlic and olive oil when you can’t think of (or afford) anything else. But you also see it in nearly every other aspect of Italian life. From speed limits to the business hours at the post office, to wine labeling laws, the attitude is … flexible.
Although it might be a problem when you’re trying to buy stamps, this approach to life makes for interesting wines. For although Italians are staunch supporters of their classic wine styles, they also like to experiment and try new things. Often that means playing a little loose with the rules. This can lead to classic regional wine names made with unusual grapes or in styles outside the regulatory norm; or famous wineries in classic regions growing utterly atypical grapes, making completely unexpected wine styles or “out there” blends, and so on. And of course, many of these improvised wines have improvised names, as the next point shows.
Italians are the masters of the fantasy wine name. For many wineries, the urge to improvise extends to wine names. I guess it’s only natural that stepping beyond the winemaking strictures of your appellation would open the door to creativity in naming your wine, too. The trend began in the 1970s with names such as Cella (as in “chilling a …”) and Riunite (“on ice, that’s nice”), and really picked up steam in the 1980s and 1990s. Today there is a raft of proprietary super-Tuscan wine names