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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
However, I also tasted wines I did not like. Some were the result of winemaking decisions I disagreed with, but there was one winery in particular whose wines I found particularly poor. They were marketed as "natural," which confirmed that people still drink bad wine simply because it's labelled as such. I have previously written on my blog about poorly made natural wines at the start of the “natural wine” trend and the difficulty of finding good ones. I believe that ultimately, a wine should be a pleasure to drink, not a medicinal chore, independently on how they are obtained, but these wines were different, they would not fit the definition of “natural wine” as it is intended.
Creating 134 subzones risk further diluting the brand and worsening confusion among wine drinkers, many of whom, still associate Italian sparkling wine with Prosecco and are unwilling to pay a premium for Italian alternatives. When faced with a choice between a bottle of Franciacorta or Champagne, based on my experience made of tastings and conversations with thousands of wine drinkers, 7 out 10 still opt for Champagne, despite not knowing how it is made, often choosing it solely for its reputation
As you might be aware, my enthusiasm for extra virgin olive oil knows no bounds, and the more I learn about it, the deeper my passion grows, leading to our range of extra virgin olive oil getting bigger and bigger. I love olive oil because there are plenty of similarity with wine, even more, when made by small producers and one of them, during my visit to Olio Capitale in Trieste said something that really struck me, I never thought of olive oil like this
Is natural wine a distinct category of wine, superior, over conventional wines? Is natural wine, by definition, a better wine, independently of how it tastes? Should we choose natural wine over conventional wine? These were only some of the questions that loomed in my mind after attending a natural wine fair in Italy, an event unlike any other I had attended before.
Finding the right wine and food pairing not only is the epitome for any wine and food lover, it takes the dining experience to another level. But before we start talking about pairings, it is important to consider the characteristics of the food and wine individually. The general criteria for pairing wine and food follows two approaches: matching by agreement or matching by contrast.
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.
2023 has been a significant year for us, first and foremost because we celebrated our 20th birthday. I still can’t believe, 20 years have flown by, and what a rollercoaster has been, plenty of ups, with very highs, and downs, including very lows. But 2023 has also been one of our busiest year ever thanks to all of you who trusted us for their “Italian” shopping, and on that positive note, I want to bid farewell to 2023 and welcome the 2024, hoping that it will bring all of us joy and health and success, whatever it means
While browsing the website of a multi-award-winning UK wine merchant recently, I came across a description of Prosecco that made me stop and reread it several times to make sure I had read it correctly. According to them, Prosecco gets its bubbles from 'injecting CO2.' This is not only incorrect, it’s a basic wine knowledge, and a mistake that no wine merchant should make let alone an award winning one.
If you follow my blog, you read more than once of my frustration in not being able to find natural wines. I believe that a wine is first and foremost a wine, and whether natural or not, becomes irrelevant if the wine is not drinkable. Until recently, all natural wines I had tasted were either undrinkable or with an unjustified price, so we decided to wait despite the trend. Making natural wines is certainly more expensive compared to conventional wines, but also more difficult, since it follows the natural process and the wine maker can do very little to control and guarantee the outcome
For Italians, pizza and wine are both in our DNA but until recently, the two were rarely served together, pizza would go with beer and everything else with wine. As time has evolved, and pizza has become "gourmet", pizza and wine is now an accepted and refined pairing but it has also become a challenging and fun exercise due to the myriad of toppings that can be used for a pizza and the thousands of wines. Not only there is a wine for every palate, but there is also a pizza, lets combine the two together for a delicious journey through the Italian's flavours
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