Sangiovese is a red Italian wine grape variety that derives its name from the Latin sanguis Jovis, "the blood of Jupiter".
Verdicchio is a white Italian wine grape variety grown primarily in the Marche region of central Italy. The name Verdicchio derives from verde and refers to the slight green/yellow hue that wines made from the grape can have.
Italian wine is produced in every region of Italy. Italy is the world's largest wine producer, as well as the country with the widest variety of indigenous grapevine in the world, with an area of 702,000 hectares under vineyard cultivation, and contributing a 2013–2017 annual average of 48.3 million hl of wine. In 2018 Italy accounted for 19 per cent of global production, ahead of France and Spain. Italian wine is both exported around the world and popular domestically among Italians, who consume an average of 42 litres per capita, ranking fifth in world wine consumption.
Vin Santo is a style of Italian dessert wine. Traditional in Tuscany, these wines are often made from white grape varieties such as Trebbiano and Malvasia, though Sangiovese may be used to produce a rosé style known as "Occhio di Pernice" or eye of the partridge. The wines may also be described as straw wines since they are often produced by drying the freshly harvested grapes on straw mats in a warm and well ventilated area of the house. Though technically a dessert wine, a Vin Santo can vary in sweetness levels from bone dry to extremely sweet. While the style is believed to have originated in Tuscany, examples of Vin Santo can be found throughout Italy and it is an authorised style of wine for several denominazione di origine controllata (DOCs) and indicazione geografica tipica (IGTs).
Torgiano is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Perugia in the Italian region Umbria, located about 10 km southeast of Perugia.
Montepulciano is a red Italian wine grape variety that is most noted for being the primary grape behind the DOCG wines Colline Teramane Montepulciano d'Abruzzo and Offida Rosso; and the DOC wines Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Rosso Conero, and Rosso Piceno Superiore.
Tuscan wine is Italian wine from the Tuscany region. Located in central Italy along the Tyrrhenian coast, Tuscany is home to some of the world's most notable wine regions. Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano are primarily made with Sangiovese grape whereas the Vernaccia grape is the basis of the white Vernaccia di San Gimignano. Tuscany is also known for the dessert wine Vin Santo, made from a variety of the region's grapes. Tuscany has forty-one Denominazioni di origine controllata (DOC) and eleven Denominazioni di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG). In the 1970s a new class of wines known in the trade as "Super Tuscans" emerged. These wines were made outside DOC/DOCG regulations but were considered of high quality and commanded high prices. Many of these wines became cult wines. In the reformation of the Italian classification system many of the original Super Tuscans now qualify as DOC or DOCG wines but some producers still prefer the declassified rankings or to use the Indicazione Geografica Tipica (IGT) classification of Toscana. Tuscany has six sub-categories of IGT wines today.
Grechetto or Grechetto bianco is a white Italian wine grape variety of Greek origins. The grape is planted throughout central Italy, particularly in the Umbria region where it is used in the Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) wine Orvieto and Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) wine Valdichiana Toscana. It is primarily a blending grape, though some varietal wine is also produced. Grechetto is commonly blended with Chardonnay, Malvasia, Trebbiano and Verdello. The grape's thick skin provides good resistance to downy mildew which can attack the grape late in the harvest season. This makes Grechetto a suitable blending grape in the production of Vin Santo.
Montecarlo is a denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) in northern Tuscany, Italy. The vineyards surround the small town of Montecarlo which is located close to Lucca and Pisa. Montecarlo wines are unusual for the region in that they are commonly made from the Sémillon, Sauvignon blanc and Pinot bianco grape varietals. This is unusual as most Tuscan white wines are made from Trebbiano and Malvasia grapes. Wines from the region are often called the best Tuscan whites.
Drupeggio is a white Italian wine grape variety that is grown in the Central Italy wine regions of Tuscany and Orvieto. The grape is often confused for the white Tuscan variety Vernaccia di San Gimignano, which is also known under the synonym Canaiolo bianco and may be counted as one and the same in field blends.
The history of Chianti dates back to at least the 13th century with the earliest incarnations of Chianti as a white wine. Today this Tuscan wine is one of Italy's most well known and recognizable wines. In the Middle Ages, the villages of Gaiole, Castellina and Radda located near Florence formed as a Lega del Chianti creating an area that would become the spiritual and historical "heart" of the Chianti region and today is located within the Chianti Classico Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG). As the wines of Chianti grew in popularity other villages in Tuscany wanted their lands to be called Chianti. The boundaries of the region have seen many expansions and sub-divisions over the centuries. The variable terroir of these different macroclimates contributed to diverging range of quality on the market and by the late 20th century consumer perception of Chianti was often associated with basic mass-market Chianti sold in a squat bottle enclosed in a straw basket, called fiasco.
Abrusco is a red Italian wine grape variety grown primarily in the Tuscany region where it is a minor blending component permitted in the wines of Chianti. The grape has long history in the region and was mentioned in 1600, under its synonyms Abrostino and Colore, in the posthumously published work by Italian agronomist Giovan Vettorio Soderini Trattato della coltivazione delle viti, e del frutto che se ne può cavare. There Soderini notes that the grape was often used to add deeper, more red color to Tuscan wines.
The Colli Piacentini are an Italian wine region located at the western end of Emilia-Romagna. In 1967, the region was given the denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) quality designation. Within its boundaries are several smaller DOCs including Colli Piacentini Gutturnio, Monterosso Val D'Arda DOC, Trebbianino Val Trebbia DOC, and Val Nur del Colli Piacentini DOC. The region has a long history of winemaking with fossilized vine roots and grape seeds excavated from the region showing viticulture taking place as early as 2000 BC. In Roman times, Julius Caesar's father-in-law Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, grew grapes in the Piacenza hills.
Incrocio Manzoni or Manzoni grapes is a family of grape varieties named after Professor Luigi Manzoni (1888-1968) of Italy's oldest school of oenology located in Conegliano, in the Veneto region. Manzoni created the new grape varieties by selecting, crossing and grafting vines from various vineyards during the 1920s and 1930s. The family includes both white and red grape varieties. Although most Manzonis are grown in northeastern Italy, they are mainly grown in the Piave area of Province of Treviso and are only now starting to be sold commercially in Europe and the United States.
Bolgheri is a central Italian village and hamlet (frazione) of Castagneto Carducci, a municipality (comune) in the province of Livorno, Tuscany. in 2011 it had a population of 131.
Sovana is a denominazione di origine controllata red or rosé wine from the south of Tuscany, in Italy. The DOC is named after the ancient Etruscan settlement of Sovana. Sovana received DOC status in 1999, along with its neighbor, the DOC Capalbio. Sovana encompasses roughly the same areas that produce the white wine Bianco di Pitigliano, and encompasses the towns of Pitigliano, Sorano, Manciano and borders the DOC Morellino di Scansano in the north, and the region of Lazio in the south.
Colline Lucchesi is a denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) for wine, created in 1968, that is located in northern Tuscany, Italy, and centered near the commune of Lucca.
Colli Maceratesi is a denominazione di origine controllata wine made in the province of Macerata, in the Italian region of Marche. The DOC was created in 1975, and allows white and red wines.
Abruzzo is an Italian wine region located in the mountainous central Italian region of Abruzzo, along the Adriatic Sea. It is bordered by the Molise wine region to the south, Marche to the north and Lazio to the west. Abruzzo's rugged terrain, 65% of which is mountainous, help to isolate the region from the winemaking influence of the ancient Romans and Etruscans in Tuscany, but the area has had a long history of wine production.
Verdello is a white Italian wine grape variety that is grown mostly in the Umbria region of central Italy where it plays a minor role as a blending grape in several Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) wines, including Orvieto. Despite similarities in their names, the Italian Verdello grape has no close genetic relationship with the Portuguese wine grape Verdelho that is grown on the islands of Madeira and Azores. However, like the Portuguese grape, Verdello's name likely comes from the dark green color of its berries before veraison.
