Fine Italian wine
Fine italian wine: if you want to buy a fine Italian wine, take a look at my recommendations. I am not a seller, I am a wine lover.
My first approach with it was tasting my father-in-law one. I admit that I didn't even know since then that people used to produce wine “at home”. It is a very common thing in small villages. People use to have a small piece of land where plant their vineyards.
You usually have a fine Italian red wine that doesn't last for long, as it has no preservatives or industrial methods applied.
This “home-made” wine is often good. It doesn't last for long, but remains a very interesting typical product.
If you visit an agritourism (rural sites that produce most of what they offer for lunch/dinner; sometimes offering also rooms), you'll probably have this local wine served for lunch.
Pay attention: this wine “swallows” very easily, and you may find yourself very happy and singing without understanding why!
Many types of Italian wines are growing in quality, winning international prizes and putting Italy as the 1st wine exporter in the world.
My wine recommendations are based on my personal experience, as I am not (yet!) a sommelier. A fine Italian wine doesn't need to be a pricely one.
The most classical is an Italian Tuscan wine: Chianti. This wine is made with most Sangiovese, sometimes with some merlot and Cabernet added in minor part.
It's a wine that will never disappoint you. If you're not a connoisseur and don't know other wines from the wine menu, choose a Chianti and you won't fail.
About 3 years ago we spent a long weekend in a small city called Greve in Chianti, located in Chianti valley.
As we arrived in our hotel... that was very cute as it was an old pasta factory that turned into a small familiar hotel; the host gave us a bottle of Chianti.
We then visited the main square, in which there were a kind of live market, and we bought the famous finocchiona (a wonderful Tuscany salami) and good bread.
Guess what? We opened the Chianti bottle with all these delicacies and...I fall in love with it!
Chianti is always a fine Italian wine for most occasions.
The best one for me is a Sardinian one called Terre Brune. It is a Carignano wine and it stays above any other wine. It's just unique!
The Italian Merlot wine is very interesting, as it is a grapevine that originates in France and began to be coltivated in Friuli Venezia Giulia, then spread to Veneto and Trentino Alto Adige. It was characterized to cold weather, but after a while it spread all over Italy, including Sicily, where it originates good wines by itself, without the common match with Cabernet. In Tuscan, it often mixed with Sangiovese.
Living in Sardinia, an island, talk about white wine reminds me of summertime, when we usually eat more seafood accompanied by a dry white Italian wine. The local one is called Vermentino, a specialty that can only be produced in Sardinia.
The Asti Italian sparkling wine was the first to became known in the world, and now this kind of Italian wine is also exported.
Italian dessert wines are a less known product, even if they are great. Try a passito next time you have the chance for. It is a sweet wine that matches deserts, but is also wonderful by itself.
In Tuscan customs, people use to have cantucci (the traditional biscuits from Prato) with vin santo after a meal.
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