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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 have launched a fundraising campaign through Kickstarter to save my grandparent’s olive grove in Abruzzo, Italy, with century old olive trees. I only rediscovered the olive grove last summer when going through old photographs and after days examining documents to remember where it was located, photographs and asking neighbours, i eventually found the olive grove. I have so many memories of me helping my grandparents collecting olives. The olive grove, now overgrown, and the olive trees have not been pruned for decades.
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.
Unfortunately, too often we associate good food and quality ingredients with expensive, but it doesn’t have to this way. The cost difference between a good tomato tin and one that needs sugar to correct the acidity because the tomatoes were not fully ripen when picked is only a few pennies; a good bottle of extra virgin olive oil, even if you use as much as I do (I use it for everything), lasts a few weeks, which makes the daily cost way cheaper than an espresso or cappuccino and a good olive oil not only makes or breaks a dish but provide us with plenty of the healthy stuff that help us living better and longer
A few weeks ago we attended, as exhibitor, the Manchester Wine Festival. Standing behind the table, we could hear people’s comments, and noticed that they were attracted by the vegan wines, everyone wanted to taste them, they were always the first and sometime the only wines people would taste. There was a visible interest but it was due to a lack of knowledge, very few knew what a vegan wine was, in fact only one person knew what differentiate a vegan wine from a non vegan.
During the course we tasted 6 or 7 extra virgin olive oils, blind tasted, and not only we had to identify each oil characteristics but hidden amongst them, there were two faulty ones: one very evident and the other slightly, and a supermarket olive oil. Exactly like when tasting wine, everyone had a different nose and palate, so we all picked different aromas and characteristics, but I was able to spot the faulty oils, which made me very happy, my nose and palate are getting there, been training for years tasting wine.
Wine tasting is a great way to hone your wine appreciation skills and by comparing wines with a common theme you can really appreciate their subtle differences. A bit like with a science experiment, the idea is to keep as many wine factors constant as possible and then compare the one variable. Wine tastings don't need to be as serious or expensive as they sound either, set a budget and theme and each of your friends can bring a bottle to your next meet up.
I managed to finish the book, but the excitement had become pain, I wasn’t enjoying the story anymore and wanted to give up in more than one occasion. We all need food to live and a way or another, our taste changes, often evolves, but food for Italians is much more than a recipe. I was hoping the book would have not only followed his series, letting “Italians” doing the cooking and telling their stories, but also showed the other side of food for Italians
The 2022 vintage has just started, this is only the beginning; the next couple of months and the amount of rain falling will determine its quality and what to expect from the wines. But 2022 has also reminded wine makers of the challenges ahead due to the extreme weather events that are becoming more and more frequent
If the various consortiums had the right management and skills could easily see that, from a financial and marketing point of view, these “wins” bring little benefit to their members and the same money could be better spent promoting the real products and educating consumers instead of paying thousands to lawyers all over the world to apply and enforce trademarks.
I recently read a post from a fellow wine blogger titled “Simple wines”. The post is about good, drinkable wines costing less compared to the “others” produced by the same winery and the article takes inspiration from the writer enjoying a good prosecco costing only “about €10”. After reading the post I asked myself whether these were simple wines or simply made wines? I can certainly define a simply made wine but could not define a simple wines, what is a simple wine? I believe simply made wines, for me, or simple wines, in a time where living costs are sky rocketing, could not be more actual to talk about.
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