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The Italian Abroad Wine Blog is a wine blog and diary where I share my thoughts, primarily about Italian wine and food, but also on wine, food, and travel in general. I founded Italyabroad.com in 2003 and have been living abroad for over 20 years. Coming from an Italian winemaking family, I was introduced to wine at a very early age. While my roots are in Italian wine, I appreciate and enjoy good wine from all over the world, alongside great food and the joys of travel. My posts often weave these passions together.
To help you better understand Italian wines, we've created a series of Italian wine regions maps that show DOC and DOCG wines, their origins and the grapes they are made of, including your favorite Italian wines. I’ve also written a post on the Italian wine appellation system explaining and demystifying the Italian wine classification system and what it really means for wine lovers and enthusiasts.
Additionally, I host a YouTube channel , where you can watch me taste some of our wines and answer your questions about Italian wines and grapes. From the meaning of DOC to what makes an orange wine, we cover it all.
I hope you enjoy reading this wine blog! Feel free to reach out with any questions.
Salute
Andrea
I travel a lot up and down Italy and I had not seen anything like this small shop for a long time, I cannot even recall the last time I did, but I miss buying food that way. It was more than just buying food, it was suddenly being introduced to the people making it, being educated, becoming aware of the food I was eating, appreciating it. Nowaday, is all about price and retailers like the lady are hard to find, quality is a just a logo on the box, produce are tasteless and anonymous, they could come from Italy or Brasil and we would not know, everything seems to be and taste the same. Prosciutto is not a prosciutto and Bitto is not just a Bitto, there are plenty of shades and differences in between and by shopping the way we do, we miss them.
Yesterday, when having a shower, I read on the label of the shower gel that it had been tested on the people making it. Whilst, I am sure, it is not the only shower gel being used, more than tested, by the people making it, it is the first one actually saying it.
I recently visited Marsala, a beautiful city located along the coast on the western most part of Sicily, a city with plenty of history and famous for giving the name to the Marsala wine, a fortified wine produced with grapes grown in the area. During my short stay, I ate great seafood, I could eat seafood and fish all day everyday, and tasted plenty of wine, but the real revelation, the hidden gem, was the Marsala wine with its several versions
Historic Prosecco producers, the ones in the DOCG area, want to get rid of the “Prosecco” name on their labels and only use “Valdobbiadene” to try and differentiate their Prosecco from the cheaper versions even though I have seen plenty of cheap Valdobbiadene Prosecco.
Panettone, the Italian Christmas cake that should be added to the Unesco Intangible heritage due to its worldwide appeal, it is now eaten all over the world and not just on Christmas day, and it has moved beyond what we now call “Tradizionale”, its original and nowadays, somehow boring recipe, also known as Panettone Milanese, from Milan, where it was originally created the first time
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
Yesterday we received the news that our gin has been awarded a Gold Medal at the latest International Wine and Spirit Competition, we are not really surprised, we had selected the gin well before the award, in a blind tasting, if anything, it proves once more that we have big noses
Our supermarkets’ shelves are full of extra virgin olive oils “made in Italy”, the Italian flag is always on the front of the bottle so that consumers can see it, but the origin, the provenance of the oil or olives is never there, it is always either on the back, if there is a back, or on the side, in small fonts
Discover how to match pasta shapes with the perfect sauces to create authentic Italian dishes. From smooth spaghetti and penne to ridged rigatoni, twisted fusilli, and long tagliatelle, learn the general rules for pairing pasta and sauces, cooking al dente, and finishing your pasta in the sauce for maximum flavor. Explore classic Italian combinations like penne all’arrabbiata or tagliatelle al ragù, and get inspired to make delicious pasta at home.
Last night if you have, like I did, watched Panorama on BBC1, it was about “Britain’s Drink Problem”, how do we solve it? We have learned from history that prohibition doesn’t work, and minimum pricing in a way is part of that approach, so it cannot be the solution, it can help temporarily until a permanent solution is found, but to solve the problem we need much more. We don’t need laws or taxes, we need education and get rid of the 3L strong cider or any other similar drink. We need to educate people, change the drinking culture
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