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
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.
Imagine buying a bottle of wine and reading “It seriously harms health” written on the label. What would your reaction be? I would be seriously p****d off.
On the other side, we should not be too angry because according to a new study, within 5 years we will be able to drink something that look like wine and would make us feel like we are drinking alcohol, without any of the side effects. What we seem to forget is that wine has been drunk since 7000 BC; the problem is not the wine, alcohol is not evil, the problem is the people abusing it.
When I founded Italyabroad.com, in 2003, wine was, for many, an unknown subject; a subject that very few people could understand let alone explain; these were the times where wine critics could make or break a winery, they were treated like celebrities. These were the times where winemakers worshipped wine writers; winemakers would have given anything for a 90 plus review or a mention from the likes of Robert Parker, and wine drinkers were eagerly waiting for their Sunday’s wine columns with their wallets ready and there were only a few wine competitions. These times are now gone
A few evenings ago, when looking for something to watch on tv, I came across the Gino D’Acampo show, the one with Gordon Ramsay and Fred, while they were tasting Gino’s wine so, I am not one of his fans but because there was wine involved, I decided to watch it. But this episode made me decide to write a post on alcohol and wine. Unfortunately, still too many wine drinkers associate and rely on alcohol content to determine the quality of the wine, the higher the alcohol the better the wine, however, this could not be wronger
January is normally a quiet, boring month for the wine industry, nothing really happens. The harvesting is over, the quality of the vintage has been declared and the wineries have been deeply cleaned. The wine is still in the making, it will be at least another 4 or 5 months before the wine is bottled, released and tasted and even in the vineyards there isn’t much to do. This is also a time when family owned wineries take a few days off.
Cheese and wine is a paring made in heaven; there isn’t a better way of ending a dinner or just sipping some great wine with cheese. However not all cheeses and wines are made to go together, there are rules that can help in pairing them. Like any food and wine pairing, the secret is in finding the balance between the two.
Having been raised and played amongst vines and olive trees, I never fully appreciated how fortunate I was. At home, on our table, not only the food was homemade, but there was always plenty of olive oil and wine, and whilst for the wine I had to wait before I was allowed to drink it, olive oil has been part of my diet from day one. I would make trips to my grandparents only to eat fire roasted bread with olive oil: three, four, five slices. No sweet, no chocolate, I was happy with bread and oil, still am. Even now, I eat plenty of it, I make my own bread and I always have a glass of wine with it. Not only I love it, but it bring back wonderful memories of my childhood. Good wine and food brings back good memories too.
It has been a couple of weeks since my last post and I have been wanting to write, but despite being in self isolation and having plenty of time, I can’t find anything to write about. Actually I do, there is plenty to write and talk about, it is just not about wine or food.
Duty has always been an easy way for any Government to raise finances, often hidden and justified, as a deterrent to the binge drinking culture or to alleviate the financial impact on social services, police and the NHS. The duty doesn’t just affect wine, it touches all alcoholic drinks, based on their alcohol content, and until last year, they were all considered as one
Does vintage matter? Yes, vintage does affect, for all reasons above and in different ways, the quality and the value of wine and in great vintages, the best and most famous wine makers will have prohibitive prices for the majority, but there will be plenty of less known wineries with more approachable prices
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