Italian Wines

Italy grows more distinct wine grapes than any other country, and that is the useful way into this range. Rather than a handful of international varieties repeated across every region, you get several hundred authorised varieties, most of which grow well in one place and nowhere else.

Tuscany is the anchor. Frescobaldi appears here across several estates, from the everyday Castiglioni Chianti up to Nipozzano Riserva, alongside Castellare in Chianti Classico and Altesino in Montalcino. The grape throughout is sangiovese.

The Veneto is the other pillar, through Zenato. Ripassa is Valpolicella refermented on the skins left over from Amarone, which gives it much of the richness at a fraction of the weight, and Amarone itself is made from grapes dried for months before pressing.

Piedmont brings nebbiolo through Ca' Bianca, Rocche dei Manzoni and Angelo Negro. Alto Adige contributes Terlano and Tramin, whose whites are among the most precise in Italy. Sicily arrives through Planeta, Donnafugata and Pellegrino, Sardinia through Argiolas, and Campania through Feudi di San Gregorio.

Several hundred varieties is a lot to hold in your head, so our guide to Italian wine works through them region by region, from Piedmont down to Sicily.

History

The Greeks called southern Italy Oenotria, the land of wine, and vines were being cultivated across the peninsula before Rome existed. The Etruscans in central Italy were making wine by the eighth century BC, and the Romans industrialised it, spreading vineyards across their empire and leaving behind much of the viticulture that later became French.

For most of the following two thousand years Italian wine was local. Regions made what grew, drank it themselves and sold what was left. That fragmentation is exactly why the country retained so many indigenous grape varieties while other nations consolidated around a few.

The modern regulatory system was established in 1963, creating DOC and later DOCG as protected designations, with IGT added in 1992 as a broader regional category. The hierarchy is useful but not absolute. Some of Italy's most celebrated wines sit outside it deliberately, a legacy of the Super Tuscan movement of the 1970s, when producers who wanted to use cabernet and merlot alongside sangiovese chose to be declassified rather than change the wine.

Frescobaldi is a reminder of how deep the continuity runs. The family has been involved in Tuscan wine for around seven hundred years, and several of the estates in this range have been in continuous production for centuries.

How to drink it

Italian wine is built around food, and it shows. The acidity that can seem sharp in an empty glass is exactly what makes these wines work at the table, cutting through tomato, olive oil and cured meat in a way that softer, riper wines cannot.

Serve reds at sixteen to eighteen degrees, which in an Australian summer means a short spell in the fridge. Nebbiolo benefits from decanting, often for an hour or more, because its tannin and aromatics both need air. Amarone is the exception to most rules: high in alcohol, rich and best treated as a wine for after dinner or for something as substantial as braised beef.

Whites from Alto Adige and Friuli want eight to ten degrees and a proper white wine glass rather than a small one.

The pairings are worth taking literally. Chianti with tomato based pasta and grilled meat. Ripasso with mushroom risotto and hard cheese. Alto Adige whites with seafood and delicate antipasti. Sicilian reds with lamb and aubergine.

For related ranges, browse Prosecco, Spanish wine and French wine.