Italy

• Abruzzo
• Alto Adige
• Apulia
• Basilicata
• Calabria
• Campagna
• Emilia-Romagna
• Friuli-Venezia Giulia
• Liguria
• Lombardia
  • Franciacorta
• Marche
• Molise
• Piedmont (Piemonte)
• Sicily
  • Mt. Etna
• Trentino-Alto Adige
• Tuscany
  • Brunello di Montalcino
  • Chianti
• Umbria
• Valle d'Aosta
• Veneto
  • Prosecco
  • Soave
• Sardinia

This may be a good time to take a step back from discussing the specific wines of Italy and discuss some of the terms that others and I have been bandying about in these articles. More importantly, this discussion will be useful when trying to read the label on a bottle of Italian wine that you may be contemplating either buying or drinking. Specifically, I would like to address the Italian wine laws that create classifications for wines based upon geographical location.

Italian wine regions and areas can be classified multiple times over, depending on the area, the climate, the history, the grapes, and through an infinite number of other ways. The following description of 7 Italian regions is meant to provide a basic guide, which will be supplemented in articles to come. The 7 regions consist of Veneto and Piedmont (to the North), Tuscany, Campania, Apulia, and the islands of Sardinia and Sicily (to the South).

I’ve taken my column’s title from Michelangelo, who once wrote, “ I feast on bread and wine, and feasts they are .” Tuscany’s most famous sculptor had his heart in the right place. Wine has been part of Italian culture since the ancient Romans began to write.

Italian Wines 2007 came to San Francisco's Fort Mason on Thursday, March 21. Not every wine shined, but most of the people did. They had not only dressed in fantastic, glossy outfits of unparalleled poshness, but the greater portion seemed to be Italian and had evidently flown all the way here to sip these wines.

It’s true that the Italians were not the first to invent wine. But more than any other people throughout history, they have demonstrated a serious passion for it. No one has to explain that the Italians are passionate people to start with- about romance, art, culture, family. Wine is also a very important part of life and everyday, which is why the Italians care so much to perfect the production process and quality of taste. The origin of wine actually lies in ancient Mesopotamia, near present-day Iran, sometime between 4000-3000 B.C. The Greeks brought the art of wine making to Southern Italy and Sicily. The Etruscans, from Asia Minor, gave it to central Italy. It might have been love at first taste, but the Romans, in particular, obsessed enough about the Greek process to later refine it and make improvements. They enhanced the Greek presses used for extracting the juices from grapes, increasing the yields, which became especially important as the demand for wine naturally grew as the population expanded.