The Italian abroad wine blog is my wine blog and diary. I founded Italyabroad.com in 2003 and have been living abroad for almost 20 years and this blog is a collection of my thoughts mainly about Italian wine and food, but also wine and food in general. I come from an Italian wine making family and got acquainted with wine at a very early age, but I don't just love Italian wine, I love any good wine and enjoy plenty of it, as well as good food and travelling, and often my posts include a bit of everything.
To help you understand Italian wines, we have designed a series of Italian wine regions maps featuring DOC and DOCG wines showing the origins and the grapes making your favourite Italian wines. I also wrote a post on the Italian wine appellation system explaining and demystifying the Italian wine classification system and what it really means for Italian wine lovers and wine drinkers in general.
Lastly, we have a Youtube channel where you can watch me tasting some of our wines and answer your questions about Italian wines and grapes, from the real meaning of DOC to what is an orange wine.
Hope you enjoy reading this wine blog and please get in touch if you have any question.
Andrea
As you may have noticed, I had to change the title of my previous post about Naked Wines' Pinot Grigio because I got a call from someone at their office Naked Wines complaining about my post about their Pinot Grigio saying that they were not happy about it and it was a mistake on their side.
A few days ago I was surfing the internet and ended up on the Naked Wines website on the Pinot Grigio page and was astonished to read what the say about it; I could only find two explanations, either they have no idea about wines, at least Italian wines, or they are deceiving customers, could not find any other. Here explained why.
A couple of days ago I went to my local Sainsbury for some shopping and noticed the massive number of Pinot Grigio on offers, I recall at least 8 different ones.
Another scandal in the wine industry, another fraud discovered. Recently the French authorities have discovered that French wine sold to Ernest & Julio Gallo for its Red Bicyclette brand as Pinot Noir was in reality, cut with much less costly Syrah and Merlot. This is not the first case and I am confident will not be the last, however, only rarely they are discovered and this is a big issue.
This is an exciting time for us, we have recently added plenty of new wines, including the Franciacorta, the Italian alternative to the Champagne, made using the classic method with the second fermentation in the bottle. I think, and I am not the only one, that Franciacorta offers better value for money than a Champagne not only because of the additional control and extra requirements prescribed by the DOCG appellation.
If you follow me, you know that I have already written about wine critics, however, a couple of days ago, in the Guardian, I read the article Is wine criticism just bunk? and I thought to add something on the subject... The article is based on the comments made by wine expert Tim Hanni that consumers should ignore wines critics and just drink what they like.
Both wines, Barbaresco and Ripasso should be a lot more costly than their young brothers, simply because they should be made using better grapes, following a more complex wine making process and for the Barbaresco, aged in barrels as well.
A couple of days ago, I was doing some shopping at M&S and noticed, in a prominent position, a bottle of wine labelled as Chardonnay Rose'. Because Chardonnay is a white grape and a rose' wine cannot be made with just Chardonnay, curious, I read the back label and found out that it is a Chardonnay with added Merlot.
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